Mechatronics

Chapter 5

Automated Identification ¹

This chapter addresses automated identification technology. In recent years, automated identification technology as part of mechatronics has become increasingly important in many areas such as industry, physical distribution, security, archiving, and medical application. Currently available and research-phase techniques related to identification technology are described in this chapter.

5.1. Introduction

We first look back at the historical development of the barcode and radio frequency identification technologies. In 1968, a barcode system for goods- wagon transport control was developed using a barcode symbol (Code 2 of 5) and a He-Ne laser scanner by Identicon Corp [HIR 01]. Afterwards, the serial barcode system grew into a system handling a large amount of information. By the 1980s (specifically 1984), the POS (point of sale) system using the JAN (Japanese article number) code was in practical use. Since then, the serial barcode system has been used to identify many articles such as foods, electrical appliances, medical apparatuses, medical materials, medicines, books, and clothes in distribution and physical distribution. In factories, barcode systems (using barcode Code 39 or NW-7) have been used in collecting production information and product instruction for realization of FA (factory automation) and CIM (computer integrated manufacture). In the late 1980s, several two-dimensional (2D) codes were developed in response to the requests ...