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Ginza Going RFID To Move Visitors To Merchants

Written by Evan Schuman
January 6th, 2007

Tokyo’s famed Ginza shopping district is about to be surrounded by 10,000 RFID tags and beacons, intended to help navigate visitors to local merchants.

The Tokyo Ubiquitous Network Project seeks to install RFID, infrared and wireless transmitters provide location-related information to people carrying prototype readers developed for the trial, Ken Sakamura, a professor at the University of Tokyo and the leader of the project told the IDG News Service. It features a 3.5-in. OLED (organic light-emitting diode) touch-panel display and a host of networking interfaces. There is RFID, infrared and 429-MHz wireless for interacting with the beacons in the trial, a wireless LAN for connection to the Internet and a Bluetooth link. General trials in Ginza are scheduled to begin on Jan. 21 and will run until March.


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