4 ms·

Pulpatronics tackles single-use electronics with paper RFID tags

48 points by albertzeyer 3y ago

kickofline 3y ago
> Instead, the "chipless" PulpaTronics tag uses the geometric pattern of the circuit itself to convey the information. In the company's concept designs, for instance, it's a labyrinthine pattern of concentric circles. So does this need special hardware to read? Seems like if so, it would be more expensive to install compared to traditional RFID systems.
- pbmonster 3y ago
  > "It's basically storing the information in the antenna." Since I'm pretty sure they can't use a laser to write transistors into paper, this probably means they just write different resonant circuits straight into the antenna structure. Their "concentric circles" are just different inductances and capacitances. So I guess the reader externally excites the resonant circuit, and reads back the different frequencies at which it oscillates resonantly. If this is the case, the reader would be significantly more expensive than current RFID tech - since current tech is using digital logic, and this is basically analog RFID. You basically need a vector network analyzer to read it out. Those are cheap-ish (below $100) if you stay at low frequency, but if you want to go above a GHz, things turn expensive quickly. Also, while I can imagine how you could encode information into one tag and read it back out, I can't imagine how you would read back an entire basket full of tags at once (like you can with conventional RFID tags, which makes checkout at supermarkets ect. really convinient).
  - nicolas_17 3y ago
    It seems like that's a different variant. "In addition to the paper circuitry, PulpaTronics also applied another of these experimental technologies...", so the "geometric pattern in the antenna" thing is a different tech from the "paper circuitry" thing. EDIT: https://www.jamesdysonaward.org/en-US/2023/project/pulpatronics https://www.jamesdysonaward.org/en-US/2023/project/pulpatron... From this other article it sounds like there is no other variant, this is indeed just encoding in the antenna shape. In which case using the terms "RFID" and even "paper circuitry" are big stretches...
    - gnabgib 3y ago
      The geometric pattern appears to be a red herring. In the article one of the founders says "but it doesn't need to be scanned visually" (so it's not like a barcode). In the Dyson page (nice find), the last slide shows the electrical response compared to a metal tag, using a vector network analyser, and includes the text "Over 1000 readings, our paper-based tag performed equally well as the copper tag".. which suggests it's intended to work with current readers.
      - pbmonster 3y ago
        The way I understood this is they developed the concentric ring pattern first, build a prototype using standard copper etching, and showed that it worked. Then they showed they could achieve similar results by fabricating the same pattern using a laser and paper. Which means you need new readers. Readers that essentially are pretty fancy network analyzers. If they want to use current readers, they need a tag with logic gates, one that can send a digital response.
petemir 3y ago
My dream: to have every supermarket item embedded with an RFID tag so I can have a constantly up-to-date pantry inventory, with notifications of out-of-stock or near-expired products. Yes, I am too lazy.
- pbmonster 3y ago
  Would also be interesting for household garbage recycling at the recycling plant. If you can ask your garbage "what are you" and it responds "I'm a polystyrene yogurt cup with an aluminum lid", separating it gets really easy.
  - westurner 3y ago
    There should be sufficient incentive for trash and recycling service providers to implement sensing and sorting now that "Making hydrogen from waste plastic could pay for itself" (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37886955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37886955
  - supertrope 3y ago
    If manufacturers had to pay for waste management they would immediately reduce single use packaging consumption. Yogurt tubs instead of single serve cups. Beer bottles can be standardized, collected after use, sanitized, refilled, and put back onto grocery shelves.
    - slow_typist 3y ago
      In Germany they have to, but most of the plastic still gets burnt. Market failure. With paper, glass, aluminium and tin plate the numbers (and the economics) are better.
  - petemir 3y ago
    At least in some parts of Italy (I was in the Lombardy region) you pay an annual garbage tax where they provide you yearly with a predetermined amount of bags containing an RFID tag. You can still ask for more bags if needed, and I guess that in that case your tax would get adjusted depending on usage (which they track with the RFIDs). Kind of unsettling though that they could link your trash back to you.
westurner 3y ago
> By contrast, PulpaTronics' alternative RFID design requires no other material than paper. The company simply uses a laser to mark a circuit onto its surface, with the laser settings tuned so as not to cut or burn the paper but to change its chemical composition to make it conductive. Can RFID tags be lased into food and clothing, too? "Laser-Induced Graphene by Multiple Lasing: Toward Electronics on Cloth, Paper, and Food" (2018) https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.7b08539 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.7b08539
- specialist 3y ago
  Nicely spotted. I only managed to find more recent papers searching for "conductive carbon-based material". PulpaTronics will be so cool if it works. Even better would be to come up with some kind of combo RFID and barcode. And laser print that tag on the outside. Straddling (or bridging) the RFID and barcode domains is a huge opportunity.
  - westurner 3y ago
    FWIU RFID cost has been a major limiting factor in supply chain traceability; pallet-level RFID is almost affordable? > PulpaTronics estimates its tags will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 70 per cent compared to standard RFID tags while halving the associated price for businesses. From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28691422#28701355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28691422#28701355 : > There's probably already a good way to bridge between sub-SKU GS1 schema.org/identifier on barcodes and QR codes and with DIDs. For GS1, you must register a ~namespace prefix and then you can use the rest of the available address space within the barcode or QR code IIUC https://schema.org/identifier https://schema.org/identifier rdfs:subPropertyOf^-1 duns, globalLocationNumber, gtin, isbn, orderNumber, productID, serialNumber, sku, taxID GS1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GS1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GS1 List of GS1 country codes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GS1_country_codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GS1_country_codes W3C DID: Decentralized Identifier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_identifier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_identifier
    - 3y ago
kentiko 3y ago
> This mechanism is similar to barcodes and QR codes in the sense that the information is encoded geometrically, but it doesn't need to be scanned visually. They really need to give more details on this. Maybe there is some RF voodoo here, but I find it hard to believe it is practical. Also, how much data can be stored? And aren't most RFID tag programmable? If this requires a laser to be programmed, it might be a significant downside compare to the chip version.
- gnabgib 3y ago
  Hard to find stats on how many are fixed vs programmable, but I suspect the majority are not programmable. Anything anyone calls a FOB is a fixed RFID tag. Many used for theft detection (library books, retail stores) are a fixed RFID tags. This seems to be tackling the Electronic Product Code (EPC)[0], which is popular in retail. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Product_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Product_Code
  - slow_typist 3y ago
    Second that, it is way cheaper to keep the intelligent part in the database. With electronic keys it is convenient to frequently update the permissions of the bearer because it allows for offline locks, but for tracking goods, any serial number that is long enough is more than fine.

48 points by albertzeyer 3y ago

> Instead, the "chipless" PulpaTronics tag uses the geometric pattern of the circuit itself to convey the information. In the company's concept designs, for instance, it's a labyrinthine pattern of concentric circles. So does this need special hardware to read? Seems like if so, it would be more expensive to install compared to traditional RFID systems.

pbmonster 3y ago
> "It's basically storing the information in the antenna." Since I'm pretty sure they can't use a laser to write transistors into paper, this probably means they just write different resonant circuits straight into the antenna structure. Their "concentric circles" are just different inductances and capacitances. So I guess the reader externally excites the resonant circuit, and reads back the different frequencies at which it oscillates resonantly. If this is the case, the reader would be significantly more expensive than current RFID tech - since current tech is using digital logic, and this is basically analog RFID. You basically need a vector network analyzer to read it out. Those are cheap-ish (below $100) if you stay at low frequency, but if you want to go above a GHz, things turn expensive quickly. Also, while I can imagine how you could encode information into one tag and read it back out, I can't imagine how you would read back an entire basket full of tags at once (like you can with conventional RFID tags, which makes checkout at supermarkets ect. really convinient).
- nicolas_17 3y ago
  It seems like that's a different variant. "In addition to the paper circuitry, PulpaTronics also applied another of these experimental technologies...", so the "geometric pattern in the antenna" thing is a different tech from the "paper circuitry" thing. EDIT: https://www.jamesdysonaward.org/en-US/2023/project/pulpatronics https://www.jamesdysonaward.org/en-US/2023/project/pulpatron... From this other article it sounds like there is no other variant, this is indeed just encoding in the antenna shape. In which case using the terms "RFID" and even "paper circuitry" are big stretches...
  - gnabgib 3y ago
    The geometric pattern appears to be a red herring. In the article one of the founders says "but it doesn't need to be scanned visually" (so it's not like a barcode). In the Dyson page (nice find), the last slide shows the electrical response compared to a metal tag, using a vector network analyser, and includes the text "Over 1000 readings, our paper-based tag performed equally well as the copper tag".. which suggests it's intended to work with current readers.
    - pbmonster 3y ago
      The way I understood this is they developed the concentric ring pattern first, build a prototype using standard copper etching, and showed that it worked. Then they showed they could achieve similar results by fabricating the same pattern using a laser and paper. Which means you need new readers. Readers that essentially are pretty fancy network analyzers. If they want to use current readers, they need a tag with logic gates, one that can send a digital response.

petemir 3y ago

My dream: to have every supermarket item embedded with an RFID tag so I can have a constantly up-to-date pantry inventory, with notifications of out-of-stock or near-expired products. Yes, I am too lazy.

pbmonster 3y ago
Would also be interesting for household garbage recycling at the recycling plant. If you can ask your garbage "what are you" and it responds "I'm a polystyrene yogurt cup with an aluminum lid", separating it gets really easy.
- westurner 3y ago
  There should be sufficient incentive for trash and recycling service providers to implement sensing and sorting now that "Making hydrogen from waste plastic could pay for itself" (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37886955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37886955
- supertrope 3y ago
  If manufacturers had to pay for waste management they would immediately reduce single use packaging consumption. Yogurt tubs instead of single serve cups. Beer bottles can be standardized, collected after use, sanitized, refilled, and put back onto grocery shelves.
  - slow_typist 3y ago
    In Germany they have to, but most of the plastic still gets burnt. Market failure. With paper, glass, aluminium and tin plate the numbers (and the economics) are better.
- petemir 3y ago
  At least in some parts of Italy (I was in the Lombardy region) you pay an annual garbage tax where they provide you yearly with a predetermined amount of bags containing an RFID tag. You can still ask for more bags if needed, and I guess that in that case your tax would get adjusted depending on usage (which they track with the RFIDs). Kind of unsettling though that they could link your trash back to you.

westurner 3y ago

> By contrast, PulpaTronics' alternative RFID design requires no other material than paper. The company simply uses a laser to mark a circuit onto its surface, with the laser settings tuned so as not to cut or burn the paper but to change its chemical composition to make it conductive. Can RFID tags be lased into food and clothing, too? "Laser-Induced Graphene by Multiple Lasing: Toward Electronics on Cloth, Paper, and Food" (2018) https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.7b08539 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.7b08539

specialist 3y ago
Nicely spotted. I only managed to find more recent papers searching for "conductive carbon-based material". PulpaTronics will be so cool if it works. Even better would be to come up with some kind of combo RFID and barcode. And laser print that tag on the outside. Straddling (or bridging) the RFID and barcode domains is a huge opportunity.
- westurner 3y ago
  FWIU RFID cost has been a major limiting factor in supply chain traceability; pallet-level RFID is almost affordable? > PulpaTronics estimates its tags will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 70 per cent compared to standard RFID tags while halving the associated price for businesses. From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28691422#28701355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28691422#28701355 : > There's probably already a good way to bridge between sub-SKU GS1 schema.org/identifier on barcodes and QR codes and with DIDs. For GS1, you must register a ~namespace prefix and then you can use the rest of the available address space within the barcode or QR code IIUC https://schema.org/identifier https://schema.org/identifier rdfs:subPropertyOf^-1 duns, globalLocationNumber, gtin, isbn, orderNumber, productID, serialNumber, sku, taxID GS1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GS1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GS1 List of GS1 country codes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GS1_country_codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GS1_country_codes W3C DID: Decentralized Identifier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_identifier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_identifier
  - 3y ago

kentiko 3y ago

> This mechanism is similar to barcodes and QR codes in the sense that the information is encoded geometrically, but it doesn't need to be scanned visually. They really need to give more details on this. Maybe there is some RF voodoo here, but I find it hard to believe it is practical. Also, how much data can be stored? And aren't most RFID tag programmable? If this requires a laser to be programmed, it might be a significant downside compare to the chip version.

gnabgib 3y ago
Hard to find stats on how many are fixed vs programmable, but I suspect the majority are not programmable. Anything anyone calls a FOB is a fixed RFID tag. Many used for theft detection (library books, retail stores) are a fixed RFID tags. This seems to be tackling the Electronic Product Code (EPC)[0], which is popular in retail. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Product_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Product_Code
- slow_typist 3y ago
  Second that, it is way cheaper to keep the intelligent part in the database. With electronic keys it is convenient to frequently update the permissions of the bearer because it allows for offline locks, but for tracking goods, any serial number that is long enough is more than fine.