Snow time with smart tags

In weather that can drop as low as -10°C and visibility that can be reduced to about one metre, it’s no fun playing tag with 275,000 people.

The challenge

During snow season, Mount Buller’s alpine village handles 60,000 cars, 2000 buses and over 1000 annual season passes. With only a manual pass-checking system in place and a need to expand the resort’s capacity, Mt Buller Mt Stirling Resort Management Board (RMB) decided it was time to think smart technology.

According to Sarah Egan, the Resort’s Customer Service Manager, the Resort wanted to be able to monitor vehicles when they were parked in the village under ten centimetres of snow or ice. They also wanted to collect visitor statistics to inform improvements and development plans.

“We get a lot of cars accessing the village but we don’t know much about [who] comes, when they come, what they do, how long they stay. So we would like to find that information out,” Egan says.

The solution

FE Technologies, a Geelong-based technology company, offered a potential solution with a chip-based Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) pass. Sarah Egan says the resort originally looked to RFID technology because it offered a smart solution to the current inefficient and labour-intensive system.

Working with Dr Nemai Kamakar, from Monash University, FE Technologies developed a tag that could be read at a distance by long-range, hand-held readers, collect visitor statistics, monitor compliance and print infringement notices.

RFID is a wireless, intelligent tracking system that involves a tiny chip capable of carrying 2000 bytes of data, which is embedded in a barcode-like tag. It uses radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to transfer the data to readers, that do not need to be near or in line of sight to work.

In September 2012, the team demonstrated the enhanced capabilities of chipless RFID tags. The technology was still in the early stages of development but already heralded the next step in the 20-year development of RFID.

“The MVP gave us a chance to work in an area where we have a lot of expertise and a chance to extend the research and development for the chipless RFID. We’ve been working with Monash University on this technology and the chipless tag was the innovation we brought to the project,” says FE Technologies CEO Robert Reed.

The chipless RFID eliminates the need for an embedded microchip as it can be printed directly on paper or plastic with a special metallic ink, creating a passive microwave circuit. This gives the innovation one of the greatest advantages over traditional RFID - cost.

Where to next?

“We’re also working with a number of players both here and overseas on some different trials involving the tracking of blood vials and blood bags,” he says. Membership passes and parcel tracking are also possibilities.

The airline industry is another that present opportunities for chipless RFID technology.

“Airline baggage handling is done by optical barcodes but this is not very accurate, with a 20 per cent failure rate,” says Karmakar. “So if you track five pieces of luggage, one piece of luggage is missed and the aviation industry loses about $3 to $4 billion per year. When they implemented chipless RFID, they got 99.9% accuracy.”

“This is very much true innovation. We have a few patents around this now. One patent has been accepted, two are provisional – and another has been rolled out around the world,” Reed says.

[LINK TO www.fetechgroup.com.au]