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March 06, 2006
RFID and Korean Buses
Professor Chang Koh of the University of North Texas (Denton) studies innovative applications of RFID. He recently attended the RFID World 2006 Conference and reports on the use of RFID to coordinate bus transportation in Seoul, Korea. Seoul, which has a metropolitan population of at least 15 million in a geographic area roughly 2/3 the size of Dallas, supports 10,000 buses, operated by 60 independent local companies.
To bring order to the potential chaos, the buses have recently been equipped with RFID devices that periodically report the buses location (from an onboard GPS) and number of adult and child occupants on the bus. A central agency accesses this data and allocates buses to areas depending on traffic requirements. Additionally, marketers can access the historical data on the percentage of adults / children to plan advertising. One possible alternative is to provide online advertising that changes content depending on number and age of occupants.
Dr. Koh is developing a business case on this RFID application. If you want to know more, you can contact him at: kohce@unt.edu. Also, if you happen to read Korean, you can learn more about this system here.
Posted by DavidK at March 6, 2006 12:08 PM | Permalink