by Mark Fralick

SCDigest Technology Editor

To listen to Mark's Audio Review of RFID World 2006, click here.

After a year of RFID shows with spotty attendance and the same old faces, RFID World 2006 comes as refreshing change.  Our initial impression that there seemed to be an up-tick in attendance was echoed by the show organizers.  Tim Downs from RFID World told Supply Chain Digest: "We're excited to see the growth in end-user attendance and knowledge of RFID at this year's show.”  Our random sampling of attendees also seemed to indicate a higher percentage of new users coming to this show.  This coupled with input from the vendors that they were all quite busy bodes well for the near-term prospects of the RFID space.

One of the things we have always liked about this show is its diversity.  Having some of its ties to the growth of Texas Instruments’ movement into RFID, it has always had a good blend of topics and vendors.  We frankly didn’t know quite what to expect in this regard having witnessed last year’s overwhelming focus on EPC topics and compliance vendors.  Happily, the balance back.  Many more non-EPC topics were on the schedule and an incredible array of interesting vendors were at the expo portion of the show.  Every aisle, by my observation, had a mix of EPC/Compliance applications and interesting Asset Management, Security, or Remote Tracking and Locator Systems.

“Now We Do Gen2”

In my discussions with the vendors, I found many of them saying something akin to “Not much new, but we now do Gen2” or “This was been out for a while but it does Gen2”.  That left the techie in me, who always wants to see new fangled toys and far reaching ideas, a bit disappointed. While there was some very interesting innovations (see below), they were not many, with most hardware vendors obviously putting their R&D efforts on Gen2 migration.

More than ever before, I saw vendors showing real products – things you can order today with a real item number on them and reasonable lead times.  So, taking off my techie hat and putting on my end-user hat – the lack of new gadgets is actually a positive development.  The vendors now know what works in real life, what interests users, and what is rugged enough for the target environments.  Additionally, the movement of the RFID more into the mainstream of the vendor’s offerings and their competitive nature bodes well for prices in all areas (printers, readers, even tags).

New Products We Liked

There were several technical innovations that caught my eye at the show. 

The best all around display has to go to Intermec’s innovative “Fork Truck of the Future.”  Teaming with Cisco and RedPrarie they have created a prototype fork truck with integrated RFID technology.  From ergonomic placement of the terminal (built into the steering column) and hand scanner, to their design of readers and antenna’s mounted in the equivalent of bullet-proof glass, this is the concept car of material handling equipment.  Not everything may make it into production, but this really goes along way to show you want could be done. 

Next, I was able to look at some very clever readers by Sirit that fit into the SD slot of a smart phone or PDA or the USB slot of a tablet or laptop.  The SD card is not much bigger than the end of my thumb and really represents one of the first non-intrusive RFID devices for this form factor.  Think of pay at the table applications for restaurants with smart credit cards and devices no bigger than a cell phone or cycle counting applications with a PDA, etc. 

Finally, I liked what Impinj and RSI are doing in the area of item-level tags.  The match of Impinj’s well known intellectual capital and RSI’s seeming ability to put a tag in just about anything makes for inlays no bigger than a fingerprint with a variety of antenna designs. 

In summary, the main takeaway from this year’s show had to do with the large number of vendors offering real products for the real world. This, along with the surprising growth in vendors offering closed-loop or asset tracking applications make for very good news for users taking their first look at RFID those moving from pilot to production, or looking for solutions beyond EPC compliance.

Did you attend RFID World 2006? What products caught your eye? Let us know your thoughts.

Article key words: RFID, asset tracking