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Current Student Projects - Spring 2007

1. RFID for in-building location finding and RTLS – This project will investigate and compare the various technologies available for location finding and RTLS with active and passive RFID. It will study the various technologies and vendor options available today, and will present a state-of-the-art review in this field.

2. RFID In Healthcare – A report and survey of where RFID is being used in healthcare, what are the applications, which technologies, what are the considerations for such usage, etc.

3. RFID in Weaponry - There have been a few companies which attempted to develop what is being called the "smart gun," a gun which uses RFID technology to only unlock itself when held by its owner. This project will study the current state of this technology, including what RFID hardware and standards are being used, and suggest different ways for improvement which take into account challenges such as the RFID-unfriendly environment being dealt with (the always metallic material used in the construction of weapons) and the different possible applications such as civilian gun ownership, law enforcement, and military.

4. RFID in marketing – RFID allows proximity-based actions to be performed. For example, when someone is close to a shop, RFID may be used to send them a coupon or show an advertisement – this can be based on individual person’s I.D. This project will study the existing applications where RFID is being used for marketing, the technologies being used, the results that have been reported, and recommendations for what are other possible applications. Other uses are individual pricing, individualized promotions, etc. An example of such personalized marketing was seen in the movie - Minority Report.

5. RFID in Finance – For cashless payment, credit card, prepay, ticketing (trains/buses), are areas where RFID is being applied currently. The project will study what are the standards in use today in various parts of the world, what is the scale of such solutions, what are the applications where this is being used, is credit card the more prevalent or is pre-pay the more prevalent modality, what are the security protocols, are there security concerns (if so what are they), etc.

6. RFID in industry verticals. - Each project will address any one of the following industry verticals: Aerospace, Automotive, Healthcare, Railways, Shipping, Airlines, Space (NASA-type applications). The project will study the status of RFID in the vertical, what are the applications where RFID is being used in the vertical (e.g inventory management, security, data gathering, routing, accounting, etc.), which are the prevalent technologies in the vertical, are there any technical challenges, have any of the applications already been developed, what are the ROI issues, what are the data issues, middleware issues, etc.

7. RFID based viral marketing in supermarkets/grocery stores – This project will study the existing RFID pilots by METRO/TESCO and other similar supermarkets and will investigate how such pilots may be extended to allow for viral marketing within the store. Example of such marketing includes recipe-based sales of related food products.

8. RFID in Emergency Rooms - Emergency rooms are places where time, patient management, and patient information need to be managed efficiently and with great urgency. This project will investigate ways to optimize performance in all these areas, while also looking at what RFID technology is already in place. More specifically this project will find ways to track patients from the moment they enter the ER doors with information concerning their medical history, current condition, and location within the ER so as to get them the quickest medical attention without wasting the ER's precious resources of space and personnel.

9. RFID in Production of Circuit Card Assemblies. - An in-line assembly approach is desirable but not always feasible in manufacturing of electronic circuit card assemblies (CCAs). Many times electronic hardware goes thru a sequence of steps that requires processes to take place in different rooms and even different buildings. This project will evaluate RFID technology for location finding of circuit card assemblies in a manufacturing environment. The implementation of RFID for metrics gathering will also be evaluated.

10. RFID in Robotic Position Calibration and Localization. - The objective of the project is to look into the use of RFID tags as a method of position calibration and localization in a cable based robotic system. Research will be done to determine previous localization techniques focusing on those using RFID technology. Tags and readers will be researched in order to determine the appropriate hardware for this application. Once the hardware has been selected initial experiments will be performed to determine the range, read area, and functionality of the hardware. Tags will then be integrated into the calibration cable and the reader will be mounted on the mobile shuttle. Tests will be performed to determine the ability of the system to localize itself and to determine things like accuracy and reproducablity.

11. RFID in Airline Industry. - This project will be looking at the use of RFID in a system wide approach where both luggage and people can be effectively and non-obtrusively tracked throughout the airline ‘supply chain’. The various pilot projects that have been undertaken around the world in major airports will be studied and their success/failure will be analyzed. Also, the technological aspects of the various solutions used in many of the pilots will be enumerated and alternative solutions suggested.

12. Equipment Tracking in closed loop applications or open loop supply chains – Tracking of equipment, computers, laptops, etc. in larger enterprise office settings is a difficult and tedious activity since they tend to be moved very often. This project involves investigating the RFID hardware that is available today that can be used for this application. It involves studying what kinds of solutions are available with active/passive, their current use modalities, the weaknesses and challenges, and, where the improvements can be made. Issues about accuracy of tracking of various RFID technologies will need to be investigated as well.

13. To study item-level RFID tag placement and readability – The various everyday items will be tagged individually with different types of RFID tags and we will attempt to read the tag IDs using various readers. We will be repeating the experiment with different tag placements, different item orientation, for each tag type the minimum tag pitch that provides successful reads, reliability of reading groups of items, reading and writing to the tags, effect of range on reading and writing, controlling read cycles, etc. After collecting the data you will report reading consistency, read distance and tag pitch consistency, repeatability, tag placement and item orientation comparison, difference between read and write distances for a given reader/tag combination, percent successful reads for item groups, etc.

14. RFID in entertainment – Entertainment and gaming represent the new frontiers of digital media. RFID as a technology has started to appear in this industry. This project will study what is happening in this field, including what are the applications, how they are used, what technology is being used, are there any standards, etc.

15. DoD RFID Supply Chain – DoD has been implementing RFID as part of its mandated efforts of 2005. Initially the mandates covered pallets and cartons, and the plan was to include some of the larger items and eventually the smaller items in the mandates. This project will study what the current status of the DoD mandates is, what has been implemented, what if any are the measure/known ROIs, what has the experience been, where DoD is going from here, and any recommendations.

16. RFID for Supply Chain Collaboration – RFID is being used for supply chain tracking, and for collaboration between suppliers in the supply chain. This project will study the current status of collaboration between various suppliers, manufacturing companies and retail customer by way of RFID – what are the applications today, what type of technology is being used, how is it affecting the supply chain, what else needs to be done, what are the technology challenges, etc.

17. Blood bank supply chain management with RFID – Agencies such as Red Cross manage blood banks which involves collection, typing, screening & testing, storage, distribution, management, and transfusion of blood, a very vital element of their medical functions. Blood needs to be maintained at specific conditions such as temperature, humidity, etc., and needs to be used within a certain time period – this makes it an ideal candidate for RFID. The project will study the progress to date made in the use of RFID for blood bank management, and will propose ideas, methods and technologies to develop the next generation of applications for blood bank.

18. RFID for Green Engineering - Tracking Parts for Recycling: When a product is broken down into its individual components at the end of the life, it needs to be recycled or reused. This project will involve studying and recommending an approach – including rfid hardware, software, etc. - for using RFID in the recycling industry.

19. RFID in Electronic Payments - RFID technology has been widely used in some cities to provide fast contact-less electronic payments. In particular, the Hong Kong 'Octopus' card, which based on the Felica technology developed by Sony, will be studied intensively as it is a very successful story. Smart cards, such as the Octopus card, store cash value in it and, it can be used in all kinds of public transports, convenient stores and fast food restaurants. In this project, the current technology and its applications will be studied. Advantages and limitations will be explored. Security issues and data management techniques are of special interest and will be examined. ROI analysis will be performed to validate the success of the Octopus card. Future developments of using the current and future RFID technology in this field will also be discussed.

20. RFID for High School Attendance - This project will investigate the viability of using RFID technology in automating an administrative activity like student attendance tracking in high schools and making it error-free. The project will investigate the implications of investing in this technology in terms of the cost, the reliability of this technology for this application as well as the infrastructure and technology standards currently being used. The project will also propose any new developments that can be used in this application.

21. RFID in Pharmaceuticals and its supply chain – Pharmaceuticals industry has typically been concerned about counterfeit drugs in its supply chain. As this industry implements RFID to try and stop counterfeit, there are other application areas within the industry where the same RFID infrastructure can be used. (A parallel may be drawn between RFID and WiFi – now WiFi is used to carry all sorts of data). This project will investigate how RFID may be used as an infrastructure piece to help with different engineering/business functions including and in addition to counterfeit detection.

22. Item level tagging in supply chain – Item-level tagging is expected to be the next big thing in supply chains for retail. Each item is tagged either on the body of the item or on its packaging. This allows a very fine level of inventory control on goods as they are shipped from the manufacturing site to their final destination. This also however has significant challenges. The project will investigate the state-of-the-art in item level tagging, what are the common technologies available today for such activities, how do UHF and HF technologies compare, who are the vendors offering such capability, what is the cost of tagging at the item level, what are the types of goods that can be tagged today based on technical and cost considerations, what are the benefits (for a given vertical or two) etc.

23. RFID and other wireless tracking/sensor technologies as used in Alzheimer’s disease - The project will involve doing literature review and analysis of Alzheimer’s disease’s requirements with respect to RFID and tracking technologies. The project will come up with recommendations for a system design using RFID and will specify the technology, usage, data, applications, benefits, infrastructure, scale, etc.

24. RFID for "Smoot Functioning of a mixed model assembly line in automotive industry - The project deals with the problems associated with the mix model assembly line (Bus/Truck) and how RFID could be used to circumvent it.The technology could be very attractive to companies prone to omitting parts/wrong installation during assembly.The project also investigates how RFID could be made to work in the most effective manner in such a harsh environment.