Radio Frequency Identification Technology for Logistics, Tagging and EPC

Korea reveals RFID-enabled bicycle sharing programs at technology expo

Friday, October 9, 2009

This year’s RFID/USN Korea, the country’s annual expo of RFID technology, featured two proposed bicycle sharing programs for “greener” transportation in major Korean cities.

The first system was developed by Victek, and involves three components: bikes with built in monitoring systems, rental kiosks where citizens can rent bikes via credit card, cell phone, or member ID card, and electronic holding fixtures where the bikes are stored and the monitoring systems are charged.


The monitoring systems installed in the bikes help government officials keep track of the bicycles, as well as record various information for the benefit of the user, including distance traveled, traveling time, and amount of calories burned.

The city of Daejeon is currently testing the system with 200 bicycles, and plans to expand it in the coming months. Additionally, the Korean government is showing its support of bicycle transportation by building more bicycle roads.

The other system displayed at the expo was developed by Initus, which operates on the same principle (monitoring systems included), but instead uses a cable for storing and securing the bicycles, potentially minimizing the space and construction needed for installation.

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The Grand Korea Alliance has opened an NFC shopping center in Seoul’s busiest commercial district, according to NFC World.

Shoppers in the South Korean capital can now head to the Myeongdong district to make NFC-enabled mobile payments at some 200 merchants, as well as download coupons from NFC smart posters, receive public transit info from tags at bus stations, and even place drink orders at restaurants with the tap of an NFC-enabled phone.

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KT Corporation, Korea’s largest teleco, is predicting that 20 million NFC-enabled phones will be in the hands of South Koreans by the end of 2012 – accounting for nearly 40% of the country’s total population, according to NFC World.

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German automotive supplier Continental has announced that it will showcase its new NFC-enabled vehicle access control solution this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

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RIM has unveiled a new contactless content-sharing system for NFC-enabled BlackBerry smart phones, according to Silicon.com.

“BlackBerry Tag” will enable users to share contact info, documents, URLs, photos and other media by simply tapping their NFC-enabled BlackBerry handsets together. The service will also connect to BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), allowing users to tap phones to add each other as friends.

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Privacy advocates in Canada have been raising concerns over the risk involved in two new biometric programs from the government that result in the sharing of private biometric data with other countries’ governments and possibly private corporations, according to an Embassy Magazine article.

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New research from the University of Arkansas reveals that apparel suppliers can gain from the use of RFID, particularly in the area of inventory accuracy.

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