A little over a year ago the Institute published a set of reports on the future of RFID. One of the things we argued was that in the future, RFID tags would be seen by consumers as just one of a kind Great Chain of (Digital) Being, part of a much bigger spectrum of information technologies that lived in or connected to the physical world. In addition to passive and active RFID tags, we'd have extremely small, disposable RFID tags; tags that had enough processing power and memory to almost be very small computers; RFID tags that were tailored to different functions and industries (e.g., security, asset management, object provenance and history and everything in between.
This, in turn, would affect public perceptions of RFID. Among other things, RFID would probably seem less alien and intrusive in a world in which lots of objects have digital functionalities. And if designed and used well, the consumer benefits could definitely outweigh the disadvantages.
Two data-points suggest that RFID may undergo (to switch from Renaissance to contemporary biological metaphors) a Cambrian explosion in the next few years.
First, Hitachi has announced development of what it's calling "RFID powder," RFID tags "measuring 0.05 x 0.05 mm" and 5 microns thick, "which they aim to begin marketing in 2 to 3 years."
By relying on semiconductor miniaturization technology and using electron beams to write data on the chip substrates, Hitachi was able to create RFID chips 64 times smaller than their currently available 0.4 x 0.4 mm mu-chips. Like mu-chips, which have been used as an anti-counterfeit measure in admission tickets, the new chips have a 128-bit ROM for storing a unique 38-digit ID number.
The new chips are also 9 times smaller than the prototype chips Hitachi unveiled last year, which measure 0.15 x 0.15 mm.
The second data-point is a patent filing by Kodak for an edible-- and more important, digestible-- RFID tag. (The patent describes it as a "System to monitor the ingestion of medicines") New Scientist reports that
The tags would be covered with soft gelatin that takes a while to dissolve in the stomach. After swallowing a tag a patient need only sit next to a radio source and receiver.
They stop working when exposed to gastric acid for a specific period of time, providing a subtle way to monitor a patient's digestive tract.
Kodak says that similar radio tags could also be embedded in an artificial knee or hip joint in such a way that they disintegrate as the joint does, warning of the need for more surgery. Attaching tags to ordinary pills could also help nurses confirm that a patient has really taken their medicine as ordered.
The Kodak patent describes the tags as
a system that uses intentionally fragile tags to provide useful information by identifying when such tags are destroyed. The system then responds to this basic change of state by providing a useful service. Such intentionally fragile tags can be composed of materials that can be not only be ingested but also digested with the understanding that break down is a desirable quality and one that enables the tag materials to be eliminated in the standard manner. Such a fragile tag that is also digestible lends itself to applications such as being included in objects meant to be ingested, such as pills, lozenges, and glycol strips.
The patent is mainly concerned with describing a system that would let health care providers (or insurance companies, or nursing home management) see that patients are taking their drugs, and also generate some feedback about how those drugs are interacting with the person's body. Personally, I'm skeptical that these systems are going to take off-- in their current incarnations (or imagined incarnations) they're at once too clunky, too invasive, and too easy to spoof-- but I think the more promising application is described later on:
A clearly appropriate application for such an embedded fragile tag is as part of a protective layer on top of bone 240 or other surface that experiences wear. In the case of bone, the wear is due to mechanical friction as well chemical reaction. In either case, there is value in ascertaining the breakdown of the surface of bone or of an artificial or natural bone replacement.
So the tags could essentially be used as sensors. But wait, there's more:
Other embodiments of mechanical interaction could be a fragile tag whose fragility is derived from response to external pressure. A typical application for such a fragile tag would be where following being embedded, such a fragile tag would function until a loss of blood pressure below a set limit occurred at which point the tag would be destroyed, giving an immediate indication of the metabolic state of the recipient of the fragile tag. Similar applications can be extrapolated for loss of air pressure in the lungs.
Other embodiments of mechanical interaction could further include a fragile tag that fails when temperature exceeds a certain limit. Compound fragile tags of this type could provide a rapid means of remotely and automatically monitoring internal body temperature.
An embodiment that combines aspects of mechanical and chemical fragility is the bio-reactive fragile tag. A casing, substrate, or component of the fragile tag would be designed to support the growth of a specific mold, fungus, bacteria or virus. The destruction of the fragile tag would then indicate the presence of the organism.
Somewhat whackier are the possible security applications:
An additional feature is the possible use of the embedded tag to monitor internal vibration in much the same manner as the Thermin listening device referred to in the background. Such vibration monitoring devices, functioning as a miniature stethoscope, can be remotely queried as originally used by Thermin in his U.S. Moscow embassy listening device.
It should be noted that fragile tags may not only be embedded surgically, but may be embedded by shooting or jabbing the body to insert the fragile RFID tag, thereby providing a safe and convenient method for testing the state of a body of a person or animal that would otherwise not cooperate in such test. An example of such an application would be an uncooperative animal that needs to be tested by a veterinarian or tagging an animal in the wild.
Or, it hardly need be said, a suspected criminal or terrorist whose food could be tagged.
One other thing jumped out at me: the term "intentionally fragile," which strikes me as a little note with with a big undertone. Normally, the last thing you want a product to be is fragile: that's what you design to avoid. Recognizing that fragility can, under the right conditions, be a feature rather than a bug, probably requires rethinking your approach to design.
But the main thing to note is this: the RFID tags that we've been arguing about are to the RFID world of a decade hence as the Altair computer is to today's world of laptops, desktops, handhelds, iPods, microprocessor-enabled automobile airbags, etc., etc..
[thanks to Sean Ness and Eugene Chang]
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