Finnish RFID provider UPM Raflatac continues to make waves with its RFID tags, this time in its home waters. The company supplied the tags used in a vehicle identification solution pilot program for the Finnish Road Authority, meant to streamline traffic on a car ferry system.
The ferry system carries vehicles to and from Hailuoto island in the northern Baltic Sea. The system offers a priority lane for professional traffic and residents of the island, but a history of misuse of the lane had caused inconveniences for users. The RFID solution is intended to address these issues.
In the pilot program, a license with an embedded RFID tag was issued to all drivers with access to the priority lane to the ferry. When boarding the ferry, drivers hold the RFID license to the side windows of their vehicles, and the system automatically identifies authorized licenses and grants access to the priority lane. Readers can identify RFID-tagged licenses from several meters away. Authorities report that access control to the ferry has significantly improved with the new system.
The solution, developed by Vilant Systems, uses a standard passive Gen 2 UHF system and DogBone tags from UPM Raflatac. Elements of the system are encapsulated to protect against rain and frost in deference to Hailuoto’s weather conditions.
As a bonus feature of the system, administrators can follow and control the ferry traffic in real time and from any location with a Web browser, thanks to readers connected to a server program via a mobile network. ![[end]](/resources/bullet/rfidnews-4.gif)
