STEPHEN MILES: One of our challenges over the next couple
of days is we have people who've come here
from all over the world.
Thank you very much for being here with all the snow
and weather that has beset us here at the last minute.
Actually, Jun Mirai from Japan was
caught in a snowstorm at Narita airport in Japan
and so won't be able to join us until later today.
And I'm sure that there will be people trickling in as well.
We wanted to keep this convocation as small
and focused as possible to see if we could actually
make some headway and to remind you
of the objectives that were set forth
by the conference committee.
We talked about wanting to identify opportunities
for collaborative research, to determine
what the core research components of some
of these opportunities might be, and use these sessions that we
have today to begin a technology road-mapping process that we
hope to follow on with subsequent events leading out
of here, which we'll share with you more on tomorrow.
But so first, I'd like to welcome you
on behalf of MIT and the AUTO-ID Labs
here at MIT, who's the host for this event.
My name is Steve Miles.
I'm a research engineer here at the lab.
And I'm the conference committee chair for this gathering.
I'd like to just give you an overview of what's
happening over the next couple of days
so you can visualize the agenda and then also thank
some of the people who are here with us
today, without whom this event couldn't have happened.
So I guess, first to start with the thank you's,
there's a conference committee that was very much created
ad hoc, people who knew people who were leading
researchers in this area.
And out of that conference committee,
there are half a dozen key contributors
who are here who I'd like to acknowledge and maybe
ask you to stand as I say your name so that people can
see who you are, because, again, these are good collaborators.
These are people with whom we've established and begun
to think of ways that we can work together.
So Dr. Bill Hargrave from the University of Arkansas, Bill,
are you here?
And Dr. Gisele Bennett from Georgia Tech--
stay standing, because I'm going to ask everybody
to applaud when--
[LAUGHTER]
--Jean Pierre [INAUDIBLE],, right?
Jean Pierre?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, here.
STEPHEN MILES: OK.
Dr. Rob Clarke from MSU, Dr. Dimitrios Kyritsis
from EPFL in Switzerland, and, actually a nonacademic but
who was the person who gets the credit
for the idea of this convocation, Mark
Roberti from RFID Journal--
so this group of people has been very instrumental in putting
together the speakers.
Please acknowledge them.
[APPLAUSE]
And then there's a second group that's
really the core group of academic collaborators
who had an equal share in putting this event together
and who you will hear from today.
Those of you who don't know them,
again, we'd like to recognize them as a group, so Dr. Elgar
Fleisch from the University of St. Gallen and Duncan McFarlane
from Cambridge University, who's represented by Alan Thorne
today--
is Alan here?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
STEPHEN MILES: Dr. Jun Mirai of Keio,
who is in a snowstorm but is represented by Shigeaki Suzuki,
Dr. Hao Min of Fudan University, Dr.
Peter Cole from the University of Adelaide, and Dr.
Sang Gug Lee of the Information and Communications University
in Korea, the latest addition to the AUTO-ID Labs family,
together with John Williams as the director of the AUTO-ID
Labs here at MIT--
so a hand for--
[APPLAUSE]
So this group has been working together now for several years,
looking at ways to collaborate to meet
some of the opportunities that come from the adoption of RFID.
And then finally, we have graduate students here
at MIT, who have been instrumental in putting
this event together.
Is [INAUDIBLE] here?
[INAUDIBLE] may be out front.
But she gets the credit for the logo, for the posters
out front, and has organized a series of fun demonstrations
of RFID technology at the MIT Museum
tonight for the reception.
And [INAUDIBLE],, on AV, doctoral candidate in the program here,
together with [INAUDIBLE],, whose last name I won't try
to pronounce--
and he's been the volunteer coordinator.
So thank you very much to that group.
[APPLAUSE]
So just briefly the outline for the day,
John Williams will introduce our keynote speaker.
Following a break, we will then go into,
this morning, the horizontal technology sessions,
so a session on the network technology
related to RFID, a session on the tag technology,
and a session on the RF and the utilization of RF
as we look out in the 10 years to come.
And then in the afternoon, we move
right into industry applications for RFID, focused
around research areas that have been brought
to the various labs around the world,
so starting with anti-counterfeiting
that is led by Dr. Elgar Fleisch, which
is the flagship project for the AUTO-ID Labs collaboration.
But then an initiative led by Alan
at the University of Cambridge in aeronautics--
for those of you who may not be familiar with this opportunity.
Boeing and Airbus have decided to redesign their entire supply
chain more the model of the automotive industry, where
they'll be able to exchange subassemblies.
And there's a requirement for an active tag
to go on those subassemblies so that a Boeing shop might
exchange a subassembly with an Airbus customer.
And for that to occur, we'll clearly
involve university research and aircraft parts manufacturers
throughout the world and will require a response
from the academic community that's
far more coordinated than what we've done in the past.
And from aeronautics, we go into automotive.
And then we're very privileged to have the vice president
of Johnson & Johnson, who's put together with the EPCglobal
health care life sciences coordinator program a session
on health care to conclude the day.
And then at 5 o'clock, we will move up
to the MIT Museum for a reception and a time
to meet one another.
And also, please, take a chance to see the half a dozen demos,
which are there showing different applications
for RFID, I believe, one of which
is an espresso machine, which recognizes your taste in coffee
by your cup, as I understand it.
And then tomorrow, we have a very extensive session
in supply chain and in packaging.
And after a light box lunch, we'll
reconvene for applications for RFID
beyond the supply chain and then a concluding panel
with some of the executives who are here.
And part of the format of each of these sessions
is to give academics no more, academics,
no more than 10 minutes to talk about really
what's key in our research and then
to get some feedback in each of the sessions,
both from industry panelists and from the audience
as to the applicability, utility, and possible direction
for that research.
So are there any questions about the logistics?
There was one question.
Bathrooms are located--
AUDIENCE: That way.
STEPHEN MILES: That way.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
STEPHEN MILES: For lunch, we are going
to walk to the other side of Mass Ave to the student center.
And so we might try to do this through the buildings
to stay dry.
We'll see how the weather holds up.
But if there are no questions about logistics at this time,
I'd like to hand the convocation over
to Professor John Williams, who's
the director of the AUTO-ID Labs here to MIT.
[APPLAUSE]
JOHN WILLIAMS: Thanks very much.
I want to welcome you all here to MIT on this typical Boston
day.
I often wondered why MIT got so much research done
until I moved here.
And then I began to understand that, in the winter,
you're basically locked in.
There's nothing to do except research.
So that's the explanation why MIT is pretty innovative.
I'd like to thank Steve Miles, especially for putting this on.
Really, it's been his effort along
with the organizing committee.
But he's done a tremendous amount, so I'd like to give a--
[APPLAUSE]
Before I welcome our first speaker,
I'd like to just remind you, I think,
how important this is that.
In the AUTO-ID Labs, this consortium of seven labs,
we got together as a consortium with the goal of architecting
the internet of things.
And when you talk about the internet of things,
it's really an infrastructure that's
going to have to last a hundred years.
If you think about the railway system, the power
system, our water supply systems,
these are infrastructures that support society and are
going to have to last.
I worry about this infrastructure,
that we need to think seriously about it, that it's not just
fast-moving consumer goods.
It's going to be knowing what something is, where it is,
when it's there, and why it's there.
And this is going to be tremendously important that we
future proof this architecture.
And I think that's the goal of this convocation,
is for us to identify the research that's necessary
so that this infrastructure will survive.
So I think it's tremendously important
that we think about that, that it's a global infrastructure.
It's cross-countries, cross-boundaries.
It's going to be incredibly difficult to do that.
So we're very fortunate today to have
one of the founders of RFID, Professor Sanjay Sharma here,
who's going to tell us about research in RFID.
So I'd like to welcome him and welcome you all to MIT.