RFID Watches Over School Kids in Japan

"Children in Yokohama City, Japan, are the focus of a trial intended to test whether radio frequency identification might make Japanese school children safer on their way to school and back again. The four-month trial began this month using AeroScout's T2 battery-powered RFID tags with call buttons. Nissan Motor Co., NTT Data Corp., Its Communications Inc., Tokyo Security Co. and Trendy Corp. are also participating in the trial. The system tracks the movement of children in a 2- by 2 1/2-kilometer (1.2- by 1.6-mile) area surrounding a city school. Each child participating in the program wears a bracelet with a 2.4 GHz RFID tag complying with the 802.11 W-Fi standard. The tags can be set to send a signal, every second or every minute, to existing Cisco Wi-Fi access points used by the city for wireless Internet access. Those Wi-Fi access points function as RFID interrogators (readers)." Source: rfidjournal.com