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Internet of Things Track
Editors: Frdric Thiesse frederic [email protected] Florian Michahelles [email protected]
Building the Internet of Things Using RFID
The RFID Ecosystem Experience
At the University of Washington, the RFID Ecosystem creates a microcosm for the Internet of Things. The authors developed a suite of Web-based, user-level tools and applications designed to empower users by facilitating their understanding, management, and control of personal RFID data and privacy settings. They deployed these applications in the RFID Ecosystem and conducted a four-week user study to measure trends in adoption and utilization of the tools and applications as well as users qualitative reactions.
Evan Welbourne,
Leilani Battle, Garret Cole, Kayla Gould, Kyle Rector, Samuel Raymer, Magdalena Balazinska, and Gaetano Borriello University of Washington
The rapid proliferation of passive RFID tags in the past decade has given rise to various concepts that
integrate the physical world with the virtual one. One of the most popular is the Internet of Things (IoT), a vision in which the Internet extends into our everyday lives through a wireless network of uniquely identiable objects. Given numerous predictions that well have hundreds of billions of RFID-tagged objects at approximately ve cents per tag by 2015,1 were not only approaching such a world, were on its doorstep.
In this type of RFID system, each physical object is accompanied by a rich, globally accessible virtual object that contains both current and historical information on that objects physi-
cal properties, origin, ownership, and sensory context (for example, the temperature at which a milk carton is being stored). When ubiquitous and available in real time, this information can dramatically streamline how we manufacture, distribute, manage, and recycle our goods. It can also transform the way we perform everyday activities by giving applications current and detailed knowledge about physical events. This real-life context can unlock the door to various business, environmental, personal, and social contexts hitherto inaccessible to Internet applications.
The incredible amount of information captured by a trillion RFID tags will have a tremendous impact on our lives. However, questions remain if we
48 Published by the IEEE Computer Society 1089-7801/09/$25.00 2009 IEEE IEEE INTERNET COMPUTING
Building the Internet of Things Using RFID
are to use RFID in the IoT. How do we transform low-level RFID data...