RFID in Japan

On March 17, Kinki Sogo Tshushinkyoku released a 14-page report that describes their 2-week experiment of RFID-based tracking of children at Shinjo Second Elementary School in the Japanese city of Tanabe (Wakayama prefecture). Like other similar projects, they also hypothesize that RFID tags would be useful for providing school children with better safety.

The experiment started on Monday, October 25, 2004 and lasted till Friday, November 5, 2004. Two different kinds of UHF tags were used: 950MHz passive tags attached to kids' school backs that are read at the gate of the school to activate a digital camera that takes pictures of kids and automatically send them via email to parents' mobile phones. 300MHz active tags are embedded in wrist bands that are worn by kids. When kids enter a potentially dangerous area, the system also sends picture messages to parents. 92% of the schools' 172 students participated in the experiment.

An interesting part of the report is the result of a survey answered by parents. 82% parents checked email sent by the system every day. And 83% parents said the system increased their peace of mind. About 50% expects improved protection and management of personal information in the future. 80% parents think that the system should be deployed outside the school campus. 80% said they can pay some monthly fee for this service.

The report also says that they achieved 100% read rate for 300 MHz tags and 93% for 950MHz tags. But they think they can achieve 100% for 950MHz too.

Sometimes email messages were lost because of some problems with the email infrastructure. This made some parents nervous as it was impossible to tell if their kids were lost or the system was not functioning properly.

The Report (in Japanese) is here.

via Slashdot Japan

Posted by konomi at March 21, 2005 02:26 AM | TrackBack