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AI Robotics Wireless Networking

New Long-Range RFID Technology Helps Robots Find Household Objects 38

Posted by samzenpus from the follow-the-signal dept.
HizookRobotics writes Georgia Tech researchers announced a new way robots can "sense" their surroundings through the use of small ultra-high frequency radio-frequency identification (UHF RFID) tags. Inexpensive self-adhesive tags can be stuck on objects, allowing an RFID-equipped robot to search a room for the correct tag's signal, even when the object is hidden out of sight. Once the tag is detected, the robot knows the object it's trying to find isn't far away. The researchers' methods, summarized over at IEEE: "The robot goes to the spot where it got the hottest signal from the tag it was looking for, zeroing in on it based on the signal strength that its shoulder antennas are picking up: if the right antenna is getting a stronger signal, the robot yaws right, and vice versa."
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New Long-Range RFID Technology Helps Robots Find Household Objects More

New Long-Range RFID Technology Helps Robots Find Household Objects

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  • i can see the procedural now (Score:3)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @03:20PM (#47968149) Homepage Journal
    Person is dead, with a big hole in his stomach. No one around who could have done it, the prime suspect has an alibi, having been no where near the place in months. The only suspicious items are a half eaten box of cookies that came in the mail, and a missing robot.

  • Put one on the dog's collar. (Score:3)

    by I'm New Around Here ( 1154723 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @03:27PM (#47968223)

    Especially if you have one of those fidgety types that run from everything.

    That robot will be so confused.

    "I swear it was around here somewhere. Not it is way over to the left."

  • I just want the detector ... (Score:3)

    by oneiros27 ( 46144 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @03:30PM (#47968247) Homepage

    A little tri-corder like device that could help me find my security badge in my house.

    If they have stickers I could put on other things, too, even better.

    • A little tri-corder like device that could help me find my security badge in my house.

      If they have stickers I could put on other things, too, even better.

      You already have one, it's called a recent smartphone. Stick-on tags? here you go: https://www.sticknfind.com/ [sticknfind.com]

    • UGrokIt (ugrokit.com) just started shipping such a thing. (Disclosure: I have worked with UGrokIt.)

  • Seems like the stereotypical use case is: put RFID on keys, send robot to find lost keys. The little paranoid person in me says, great now some smart techno-burglar can find where I keep my keys and steal my car. That's of course assuming that my key-less entry car isn't easily hackable.

    • Imagine a pranking thief, he goes into your house and steal all your RFID stickers, your security cameras, etc. and leave everything else intact.

  • Walls, Corners, Stair Wells, Stair Cases, the open Front Door.
  • Someone should tell this robot to stop misplacing things.

  • Potentially very useful (Score:3)

    by mandark1967 ( 630856 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @03:40PM (#47968375) Homepage Journal

    I work at a large organization where we have several thousand computers, most with dual monitors and other peripherals.

    It would be very beneficial if this technology allowed us to perform our yearly inventories by simply walking through each room carrying a tablet or laptop which recorded the devices present in each room.

    We could then see, easily, if any equipment (like secondary monitors) were moved from room to room without permission.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      Won't someone require a verification of ID tags against actual equipment serial numbers in a case like this, at least for some statistically significant portion of the equipment list?

      Otherwise, you're just inventorying ID tags which could be stuck to anything. Now if they could manage to integrate the tag into the system somehow, although you'd have to define what the system was, otherwise you kind of get into a Theseus paradox situation.

      Which makes me wonder how many empty computer cases have been "invent

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sl149q ( 1537343 )

        Yes, but that is no different than any other inventory sticker.

        In other words... the rfid tag becomes the inventory sticker. The difference is that it can be visually inspected OR inventoried quickly with an RFID reader.

    • Why not just place static readers on all the doors - you'll immediately know when something moves from one room to another? Granted you won't know which way it was moving, unless it traversed another door. But, if you know the starting location, there you go.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sl149q ( 1537343 )

        Newer Gen2 readers can do limited movement detection. It would be possible to detect direction. But possibly not reliably (if the tag orientation is not correct WRT to the antenna it becomes more difficult.)

  • ...of radio wave sensing, would be to analyze how radio waves reflect on various surface materials & mass.

    If we could do this (it would require MASSIVE programming & knowledge of structures and algorithms to recognize structures via RF waves & reflection), then we could use the RF waves as sort of echo-location, kind of like how bats see with the help of sound waves.

    I've known this since I was a kid, when I was messing around with FM-transmitters to listen to my parents quarrel from a safe

    • This would work exactly like machine vision (because light is radio) but with much larger antennas, and a lot more transparent/translucent (and very refractive!) materials to cause more computational difficulties.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by qvatch ( 576224 )
      Ah yes. It's called RADAR, specifically a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]

    • Think of it this way... design a blueprint of your building in something like sketchup, and tag all the different surfaces according to type. Then put antennas in strategic places in the structure (could do 3 in each room, or surround the entire building) and turn on the multiband antennas.

      The RF interference should be able to be mapped in this way fairly easily; especially if you set state and then open/close doors, turn WiFi on/off, turn on lights/heaters, etc.

      Record all this state information, and then

  • Things I'd put such an rfid on include my phone (when its run out of power and I can't just call it), my car keys, the remote control, my reading glasses (as long as it's small enough to unobtrusively attach to the temple part of the glasses frame), and my cat.

  • The problem with both StickNFind and UGrokIt and any other similar product I've heard about is that they're too much expensive. 25$ tag on a $10 remote control? Haha.
    I wouldn't mind a product with a short detection range (1 meter for me is good enough to find stuff in lockers and below sofas or inside my car), and/or without any security (for what, burglars can detect stuff with eyeballs too). Doesn't need any fancy stuff like sound beeps or remote tracking or anything, make it simple and CHEAP. I just want

  • A few years back, a local large-chain supermarket did a major refurbish. UPC codes had been universal for at least five years at the time. While shopping, I noticed that a few different types of canned vegetables were showing up on the shelves without the UPC codes printed on the labels. This was before use-by dates were mandatory. RFID tags could be on product cases or pallets to enable timely inventory rotation, so goods wouldn't be forgotten in the back and bottom of a densely packed row in the store's

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