Radio Frequency Identification Technology for Logistics, Tagging and EPC

Ford debuts RFID features during BCS

Friday, January 9, 2009

The Ford Motor Company used the spotlight of a halftime commercial during last night’s Bowl Championship Series championship game to showcase a new RFID application available for some of its vehicles.

The application, called Tool Link, is the product of a collaboration between Ford, toolmaker DEWALT, and RFID developer ThingMagic. Tool Link enables users to create an inventory of RFID-tagged tools in the bed of a pick-up or cargo area of a van via a dashboard display monitor.

The system uses rugged RFID tags provided by DEWALT and ThingMagic’s Mercury5e embedded readers and customized antennas. The system is part of Ford’s Work Solutions, a collection of affordable technologies designed to assist customers in better running their business, and is available for 2009 Ford F-150, F-Series Super Duty pickups and E-Series vans.

Last year, the BCS Championship game, the “Superbowl of College Football”, attracted 28.8 million viewers. In last night’s game, Florida defeated Oklahoma 24-14. [end] 

Related Articles
Easylube debuts automated RFID lubrication system

Easylube has introduced an automated electromechanical gearset using integrated RFID technology to track and manage lube points throughout a plant.

Each lubricator also features a bi-color LED warning light, replaceable grease cup, RFID tag and reader to enable real-time tracking of bearings. The RFID reader serves as a wireless data collector, reading Easylube RFID tags that are placed on each lubrication point and transmitting the lubrication status to a handheld PDA. Exact regreasing volumes and intervals are calculated using minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) formulation.

read more »
Murata collabs with Beta LAYOUT on RFID starter kit

Murata and Beta LAYOUT announced a joint venture to launch an RFID starter kit aimed at printed circuit board (PCB) engineers and developers aspiring to incorporate RFID into their electronics design.

read more »
Collis debuts Visa Mobile Payment Specification Test Suite

Collis has announced the launch of its Visa Mobile Payment Specification (VMCPS) Test Suite, enabling the functional testing of UICC or secure element-based contactless mobile payments applications.

read more »
Atmel debuts single-package microcontroller with LF-RFID reader

Atmel Corp. announced availability of an AVR microcontroller (MSU) with an RFID reader block and 16kBytes of in-system self-programmable flash.

The Atmel ATA5505 is one of the industry’s first MCU that features full low-frequency (LF) RFID reader functionality within a single package, unlike others where the MCU and RFID reader are located in two different packages. This translates into customers being able to develop and manufacture small, low-cost reference PCBs for various reader types.

read more »
Sprint to make NFC standard on LTE phones

Sprint Nextel has announced that it will make NFC a standard feature on Long Term Evolution (LTE) smart phones, reports Light Reading Mobile.

Sprint, a launch partner of Google Wallet, told LR Mobile that they will include NFC chips in all LTE smart phones, excluding free phones and low end models, in order to “aggressively promote contactless technology.”

read more »
Leo InnoTech, UPM large-scale item-level implementation at China apparel co.

Leo InnoTech (LIT) and UPM RFID have carried out a large-scale item-level RFID implementation for a Chinese apparel company focusing primarily on warehouse logistics optimization.

read more »

Copyright © 2012, AVISIAN, Inc. All rights reserved.