Sunday, February 24, 2008

RFID Technology: Pro and Contra

I found this video on You Tube. It's a very interesting video. Try to watch it before you read through this post.



Video shown above is one of IBM’s commercials. A guy, who initially looked like shoplifter, took whatever he wanted in a supermarket and just walk out without queuing on the checkout line to make payment. According to IBM, This is how we going to shop in future time. Customers do not have to queue up on check out line to pay. The supermarket/store system automatically scans the items taken including customers information (for payment) just as the customers walk out of the store. This is possible due to adoption of technology called Radio-frequency identification (RFID). This technology has been existed since 60 years ago (during word war II). However, only in the last decade, people started to use it commercially.

As according to Wikipedia, RFID is an automatic identification method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders. An RFID tag is an object that can be attached to a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification using radiowaves. The picture below shows how RFID tag looks like.


RFID tag contains microchip that stores particular information and small antenna that sends out information to the reader. RFID tag is relatively small and thin, thus, is can be hidden behind product label. This technology offers more advantages compared to bar code system. Unlike bar code reader, RFID reader can read hundreds of tags at one time. RFID tags are relatively inexpensive, although it is not as cheap as bar code. It costs around $0.05 at the minimum. This trigger the growth of this technology's adoption. People started to apply RFID technology in many areas. One example of successful adoptions of RFID technology may be the warehouse management system. RFID helps in keeping track of all products that are entering and leaving the warehouse. It saves time, cost and effort.

Regardless of its usefulness, this technology is likely to be misused. Imagine that one day RFID technology is so advanced that it can tracks any tag on earth. A shoe manufacturer may simply attach RFID tag in the hidden area of your shoe, and use it to track you down. Application of RFID technology to track down human may be a serious privacy violation.

IBM has patented human-tracking system called "Identification and Tracking of Persons Using RFID-tagged Items". The following paragraph is the abstract taken from the patent application.

"A method and system for identifying and tracking persons using RFID-tagged items carried on the persons. Previous purchase records for each person who shops at a retail store are collected by POS terminals and stored in a transaction database. When a person carrying or wearing items having RFID tags enters the store or other designated area, a RFID tag scanner located therein scans the RFID tags on that person and reads the RFID tag information. The RFID tag information collected from the person is correlated with transaction records stored in the transaction database according to known correlation algorithms. Based on the results of the correlation, the exact identity of the person or certain characteristics about the person can be determined. This information is used to monitor the movement of the person through the store or other areas."

The following video shows how that system may look like.




Personally, I am not against the use of RFID technology in tracking human. However, human have to be given the right to decide when and where the tracking should be active or inactive. For example, when someone is hiking , he/she may want to be tracked in case he/she get lost. Therefore, to prevent misuse of this technology, tight control and proper policy are needed.

References
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Friday, February 15, 2008

True Knowledge - Computer System that Understands

Although Valentine’s Day has ended, it would be interesting if I can start this blog with Valentine-related topic. I started to find a topic by doing a search with “love” + “computer” keywords on Google. Indeed, I found something interesting, which is a blog posting titled “Teaching a Machine to Understand love”. This blog discussed about a blogger who tried to teach his computer system what love is. The first question popped up on my mind is “How to do that?”. This Question leaded me to a system with unique technology called “True Knowledge”.

According to the developer, True Knowledge is “a technology which can represent the world's knowledge in a form that is clear and accessible to humans, as well as being comprehensible to computers”. That means that this technology enables the knowledge to be stored in the form that can be understood by computer, not merely plain text that it doesn't understand. Thus, computers can analyse and process that knowledge and then derive new knowledge.

This knowledge can then be used to answer questions from users or other computers. The developer claimed that this system “can answer questions it hasn't seen before and can combine knowledge through a process of inference and cross-referencing stored information to produce a reasoned answer.” This makes the system different from standard search engines such as goggle or yahoo. Standard search engines response to queries or questions by searching for web pages that have matching keywords, and then it returns the list of the matched web pages as search result. Therefore, most of the time users may get irrelevant responses.

Unlike the standard search engine, this system intelligently addresses users’ queries or questions by providing straight-forward answer. At the same time, it also provides standard search result as supplementary response. The following picture is a picture that I took from the developer website. It shows a sample response of the question: “Is Jennifer Lopez Single?”

Knowledge gets in to the system from two main sources: users' contribution and external databases. Users can contribute new knowledge to the system, just like Wikipedia. To contribute, users only required to type in facts in plain English. Users can also modify or remove incorrectly or maliciously added fact. Both knowledge from users and external database are analysed and processed before they are stored to the knowledge base.

On the main page of the developer website, there is a form in which visitor can sign up to test this technology. So I sign up, hoping to get a chance to try the system myself. However, I felt so disappointed after I had completed the registration process. I got a notification saying: “We'll be in touch with an invitation to create an account in due course, however please note that there are currently many thousands of people in the queue, so there may be a delay while we scale up the test.”

Although I could not test the system myself, I found a demo video on You Tube. The video shows sufficient information about the technology, including: the features, architecture, comparisons with other technology and etc. Here I included the video.



This technology may replace the standard search engine in future time. I suppose, if "True Knowledge" managed to launch this service, it will be a threat to Google and other standard search engine companies. And this makes me wonder: “How come Google, as a current biggest search engine company, has not shown any sign of movement to compete?” or "are they silently preparing their 'secrete weapon'?".


References
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