Robots can find things better thanks with RFID technology

Robot vision — and comprehension of what the robot sees — is one of the major sticking points when it comes to household helper robots. But robots don’t have to be subject to the limitations of human senses — particularly if they can tap into technologies such as NFC and RFID. The latter has been implemented by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology to help robots locate objects. To be more precise, they have used small ultra-high frequency RFID tags, stuck onto objects, which robots can then track in a room — even when the tag is hidden out of sight. RFID alone, however, is not sufficient for item location. “RFID doesn’t tell the robot where it is,” said biomedical engineering associate professor Charlie Kemp. “To actually find the object and get close to it, the robot has to be more clever.”