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DO YOU ever wish there was something that could stop you forgetting things like your keys, cellphone or wallet? Well soon your wristwatch could do just that, thanks to an idea being developed by engineers in Seattle.
The system is based on radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, small electronic labels originally designed to automate commercial goods tracking. The idea is that you label all the items you carry about every day with RFID tags, which only cost about 25 cents a piece. Then if you leave anything important behind, your RFID-enabled watch notices that one of the tags is missing. "You'll hear a beep from the watch and get a message telling you what you forgot," says Gaetano Borriello, the computer scientist at the University of Washington who came up with the idea.
RFID tags consist of a small electronic circuit with an antenna and a memory chip that stores a unique ID code. When you "ping" the tag with a radio signal, it provides enough energy to let the tag send back its ID code, within a range of about 3 metres. By assigning different codes to different goods, a company can use an RFID reader to quickly gauge what level of stock it has on its shelves.
But researchers are keen to find other uses for RFID, and the reminder watch is just one of the ideas that will be presented at the Sixth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing in Nottingham, UK, in September.
The watch runs software that lets you store a list of any items you can't afford to lose. Then you stick an adhesive RFID tag, which can be as small as a coin, onto each one and read the codes on the tag to program the watch. You also specify when and where you need to have each item with you, and the watch does a "headcount" whenever you go past a trigger point such as the door of your home or office. For example, when leaving home, the watch could be set to check you have your keys, coat, wallet and phone. And at work, the system will know not to worry about your house keys when you go out for lunch, but will ensure you take, say, your ID pass.
Ideally, the RFID reader would be built into the watch itself, so you would be alerted the moment you strayed too far from one of your valuables. But unfortunately RFID readers are still too big for this, because the part that pings the tags requires complex circuitry to control how and when the tags respond: too many tags chirping at once overwhelm the reader. However, the bit that decodes the incoming signals can easily fit on your wrist.
So until RFID readers shrink enough to fit inside a watch, Borriello is proposing to use the RFID readers we already come across in everyday life - such as those that read passes in offices or electronic tickets at railway stations. When you walk past one of these readers, he says, they will activate the tags you are carrying and get them to announce their presence (see Graphic). The watch could then work out whether you have mislaid anything, though it would also mean buying a $100 RFID reader to put by your front door.
But for now, RFID is a young technology with varying standards and protocols, so not all readers are compatible with all types of tag, warns Markus Kuhn, a computer scientist at the University of Cambridge. So Borriello's system would only work with compatible RFID readers - and, of course, if you remember to wear the watch.
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