New RFID tech to make lost baggage history

Parma ( Italy), June 6: An Italian company has developed a new tagging technology that uses RFID chips to track luggage in real time at every stage of the transfer, an advance that may put an end to lost or delayed baggage which cost airlines billions of dollars each year and pose security risks.

According to a report by the aviation IT specialist, SITA, 5.73 bags per thousand passengers went astray in 2016. Recovering and returning lost bags cost the aviation industry $ 2.1 billion in 2016.

Using the technology, scanners on conveyor belts can scan the radiofrequency identification ( RFID) tags attached to the bag and reroute them if they have been sent in the wrong direction, a vast improvement on barcode hand scanning, which has been the industry standard since the ’ 90s.

The technology is already in use at the Hong Kong and the Las Vegas airports, according to Gabriele Ruggiere, Head of Aviation at Custom Group, the company which is supplying printers to over 300 airports in the world, including 16 in India.

Delta is the first airline to use RFID baggage tagging at a large scale, Ruggiere said in an interview at their global headquarters here. “The direct printing of RFID tags on ■ the baggage tags allows tracing the suitcases during their whole path, reducing to the minimum the risk of loss or delay with the delivery, including security too,” Ruggiere said. The technology is emb- edded in the ticket printer that the company has developed. A special tagging paper with an RFID chip is used for it. The antenna in the printer reads and encodes the unique information in each tag, which is then used to trace the luggage at any stage of transfer.

RFID uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. The tags contain electronicallystored information.

Passive tags collect energy from a nearby RFID reader’s interrogating radio waves. Active tags have a local power source ( such as a battery) and may operate hundreds of metres from RFID reader.

“At an airport when you check in, you want your luggage tagged in a very short time. The tag is 50 cm long so if you use Custom printer it will be tagged in a second, while other printers take 5- 6 seconds,” Ruggiere said. “With the changing technology, it is safer and more secure to use RFID system as compared to the bar code,” said Custom Group CEO and President Carlo Stradi.