With ABI Research predicting near field communication technology will be installed in nearly half a billion mobile phones by 2011, there’s quite an opportunity for innovative and far sighted companies to get in on the act as demonstrated this week at the Las Vegas CES by Innovision.
CES is the Consumer Electronics Show, a playground for techies and is a reflection of the predicted uses for near field communications in the future but will NFC, a spin-off from RFID technology, be dominated by consumer based uses or will industrial users provide just as much revenue to this up and coming technology?NFC enables devices such as mobile phones to carry effectively a short range RFID tag reader, the mobile technology can then use this information to perform other functions such as debiting money, accessing the internet, sending an SMS or dialling a number. The implications are therefore huge and the technology is already being developed for the security industry in applications such as smart access control, guard tour monitoring and control and switching functions. Without any need for wiring and with an ability to be used in any environment where you can place tags, the technique becomes easy to deploy, low cost and very effective. For Guard duties, several functions can be combined in one unit enabling, for example, radio communications, lone worker protection, tour monitoring, door access, secure computer log-on and even to buy something from the coffee machine! In each case, it would simply require the guard to touch the device to the tag and continue the tour.
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