Article

How long before RFID check-out?

Solutions at Wincor World move closer to one of retail's Holy Grails.

January 30, 2008

PADERBORN, Germany—It's one of the Holy Grails of retail: A shopper fills her cart with groceries, rolls up to a check-out counter, and virtually instantly, without a single item being taken back out of the cart, the items are itemized and totaled.

RFID technology is currently the best technological bet to make that happen. But exactly when is a matter of no small contention.

Even on the floor of Wincor World, the annual trade fair sponsored by Wincor Nixdorf, there is a gaping chasm between the optimism of some, who put the advent of the necessary technology at about 10 years out, and the belief of at least one Wincor executive, who in essence says not in our lifetime.

Score one for the optimists. Maybe. Wincor Nixdorf, in partnership with IT component manufacturer Wanzel, has developed a prototype grocery cart called the RFID-Tango.

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According to Wanzel spokesman Rainer Eckert, the cart and its software platform clear at least one of the major barriers.

The problem solved by the RFID-Tango is called bulk-reading. RFID chips broadcast their signal a thousand times a second. One reader attempting to comprehend multiple signals at once can get confused. (Imagine trying to make sense of a dozen people talking at the same time.)

The bulk-reading solution developed by Wanzel manages to tell voices to "shut up" when it has finished reading them. It can understand signals from up to 100 items in one cart, reexamining the set of signals constantly for additional items or to detect whether any items have been removed from the cart.

Eckert admits the remaining challenges are not insignificant.

First, as written ad nauseum in stories about RFID adoption, the price of transmitters must come down. Currently, chips are under four cents each. The goal is to get them under two cents, which would make the technology less costly than barcode printing, which costs about two cents per package, owing to the exacting standards of bar width and readability.

In addition, current transmitters are metal-based, which limits the recyclability of the package. The goal is to make them polymer-based. Then, not only will the transmitters be recyclable, they can be imprinted onto the package as part of the offset printing process.

Finally, retailers and RFID component manufacturers must agree on standards such as naming conventions and broadcast guidelines, as well as develop and roll out a mammoth data transmission and storage infrastructure.

In about a decade, Eckert believes those problems will be solved. But whether that's in 10 years or 15 or five, he's confident we'll live to see it.