Tracking bags with RFID: new research by Digital Ecosystems group
Friday 9 May 2008
Professor Paul Krause and Luke Morgan, together with Adam Dalby of i-Trak Ltd, were invited to present their research at a recent meeting of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) at Geneva on the 29th April. Their work is being funded under a "Knowledge Transfer Partnership" scheme, and addresses the use of permanent Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags for baggage tracking.
Several airports are trialling the use of "throw away" RFID tags as an alternative to the current labels used within the baggage handling processes. However, these are much more costly to the airlines than conventional tags, and offer little help in situations where a bag has been misdirected. In the solution proposed by the Surrey/i-Trak partnership, an RFID tag is built into luggage at manufacture and provided with a permanent identifier. This identifier is then registered with the owner on purchase, and the same tag can then be used within an airport's baggage sorting system to guide it from check-in through to the main loading area and during processing of a transfer. If the worst happens and the bag ends up at the wrong destination, then entering the identifier to the website where it was registered will send a message informing its owner of the bag's location.
Surrey and i-Trak are now working with IATA to integrate this identifier into the existing data standard for RFID tags, and have been invited to present an update of their work at an IATA meeting at their headquarters in Montreal in October.