Asset monitoring is becoming important. The ability to locate and track persons and assets in warehouses, retail stores, hospitals, and refineries allows for a plethora of new application scenarios, and connects people, assets, and processes on demand. Consider the “Retail Store of the Future”: merchandise is tagged with RFIDs, shoppers carry an intelligent device (PDA, smart phone) with rich multimedia capability and wireless connectivity. Merchandise picked up is identified by the embedded RFID reader, recorded and billed to the customer’s account, thereby enabling automatic check-out upon leaving the store. By adding functionality for location sensing the shopping experience can be dramatically enriched and a variety of innovative location-aware applications and services become possible. For example: using the personal shopping list stored on the customer’s intelligent device, he/she can be directed automatically to the shelf where desired merchandise is located. Location-specific advertising can be displayed on the customer’s multimedia device.
Last updated 20 Jun 2006