Development of radio frequency identification textile and mapmaking system

In this paper, we present a highly accurate position detection system using a textile technique as a useful application of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. To support this system, we also developed an automatic mapmaking system. Massively distributed RFID tags have the potential for location-aware applications. However, deploying RFID tags and correlating the physical coordinates of each tag identification for mapmaking is relatively expensive and time-consuming. We developed RFID textile and a customized textile inspection machine as an automatic mapmaking system. We examined the feasibility of a tracking system using the RFID textile that was calibrated by the developed mapmaking system. The calibration for a 19-m length of RFID textile, including 1900 RFID tags, was completed within 38 min, and RFID-based tracking system could successfully detect a walking trajectory.