"inverse" RFId

[Clayton H Lewis]

here is a review of recent work on tracking visitors, including an  
RFID study:
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/papers/baldwin/baldwin.html

here is info about cost: ranges from $100-$2000 for a reader
http://www.rfidjournal.com/faq/20

I don't know what the possibilities would be for having multiple  
readers covering a space to get finer location info, or for having  
multiple antennas time shared by a single reader... without some such  
arrangement one would need one reader per spatial zone one wanted to  
discriminate, which would make identifying the specific object a  
visitor is viewing expensive for any meaningful scale.

The Exploratorium used badge readers, one per selected exhibit, but  
these do not have the accessibility advantages that reading from a  
distance would have.



On May 1, 2009, at 7:27 AM, Jorge Silva wrote:

> that does seem to place the least amount of demands on the  
> technology that visitors are required to bring in order to benefit,  
> but it does shift those demands to the museums who have to invest  
> in the infrastructure.
>
> I wonder how many RFID towers the museums would have to have in  
> place to achieve resolutions comparable to the other methods being  
> described (?)
>
> Jorge Silva, PhD
> Inclusive Design Lab
> Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto
>
>>> From: Clayton H Lewis <Clayton.Lewis at Colorado.EDU>
>>> Date: April 30, 2009 12:54:56 PM EDT
>>> To: Antranig Basman <antranig at caret.cam.ac.uk>
>>> Cc: Fluid Work <fluid-work at fluidproject.org>
>>> Subject: "inverse" RFId
>>>
>>> having belatedly looked at the page on in-museum services, I want  
>>> to promote the "inverse" RFId  approach that's mentioned within  
>>> the RFId section...  the idea being that visitors, not stuff in  
>>> the museum, get tagged
>>>
>>> seems as if this has powerful advantages with respect to all of  
>>> the alternatives besides image recognition
>>>
>>> in particular, visitors don't have to be assumed to bring any  
>>> device, to get some benefit (eg a map of their visit for access  
>>> later)
>>>
>>> if the visitor does have a device, it only has to have web access  
>>> to deliver useful stuff, if one arranges a match up of visitor's  
>>> device to visitor's tag (a possible scenario: on the way into the  
>>> museum, wearing your rfid tag, you pass through an entry big  
>>> enough only for you... on your phone you go to a website that  
>>> knows which tag is in the entry at that moment, and your phone  
>>> thereby picks up what your tag is... thereafter the website  
>>> content is targeted to you based on the location of your tag)
>>>
>>> seems to me all of the alternatives, including image recognition,  
>>> make considerably heavier tech demands on what visitors have to have
>>>
>>> Clayton Lewis
>>> Professor of Computer Science
>>> Scientist in Residence, Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities
>>> University of Colorado
>>> http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~clayton
>>>
>>>
>>>
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Clayton Lewis
Professor of Computer Science
Scientist in Residence, Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities
University of Colorado
http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~clayton



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