Taking a toll in China

VTT has developed a traffic and road toll monitoring system based on RFID remote identification that will be deployed in China.

The VTT Technical Research Centre in Finland has developed a traffic and road toll monitoring system based on RFID remote identification that will be deployed in Wuhan in China, a city with a population of 7 million.

Readers will be installed on each of the city's bridges during the year. The goal is to eventually expand the RFID reading system to cover the entire city and use it for traffic control purposes.

VTT will deploy its long-range UHF RFID technology solutions in China through FennoID, a Finnish company established for the purpose. FennoID is a shareholder in ReadTech, a recently established Chinese company which markets the systems in China and invests in mass production of RFID tags.

The company will supply the City of Wuhan with one million RFID tags, with deliveries scheduled to begin before the end of the year. In the first phase, some 100 readers for the road traffic application will be installed on the city's bridges. In the future, the company will also supply RFID tags and systems to the Chinese transport and logistics market.

Heikki Seppä, a Research Professor at VTT, believes it will not take long before tagging technology is used in electronic driving licences and to identify cars – at least in China.

VTT has been actively developing RFID technology for more than ten years and has made significant advances in the field - the integrated circuit and antenna used in the RFID tag to be introduced in China are based on innovations made at VTT.

VTT also holds several patents related to tagging technology and remote identification.