A Chinese vessel with e-tagged containers sailed on Monday from Shanghai to Savannah, United States, marking the opening of the world’s first international e-tagged container route.
The doorbell-sized e-tags installed on the latch of a twenty-foot-equivalent unit (TEU) will record information about every procedure the container goes through in the whole transport process. It will record delivery and off-loading time, real-time TEU conditions and time and place of legal, or illegal, opening.
The information will be transmitted through a wireless regional Web network to a website for monitoring. If a container is illegally opened enroute, the e-tag will automatically record the “intrusion” and put out a red alarm signal on the Website.
The e-tag developed by Bao costs about 50 yuan (about 7 U.S. dollars) and can last 10 years.
We’re not talking about anything more complex than current systems tracking motor freight in the U.S..
Let me see if I understand: It’s our War On Terror-government that leads the world in whining about security – and China launches this simple device, first?
The U.S. hasn’t finished a multi-million dollar feasibility study that will eventually confirm the need for devices duplicating Bao’s – but, costing $500 apiece when we buy them from a division of Halliburton.
More .html sarcasm, eh?
#1 hit it:
If U wanna see U.S. making anything, it has to be profitable, ergo it has to cost a whole lot. And simple isn’t the way to expensive… nuff said.
Great idea. It doesn’t really pay for U.S. engineers to think of that stuff, since nothing is made here anyway.
The US military has had similar long range RF memory tags on its supply containers for a number of years. I remember a presentation on this at MIT from the Defense Logistics Agency in either 1999 or 2000.
The tags were not that expensive. I forget the contractor.
I remember one line from the talk in particular. The DLA knew that things were working when units in Kuwait started sending their guys with RFID readers and laptops to steal supplies from yards instead of just bolt cutters.
Well, sadly, Silicon Valley is still too busy with Social-* to produce any actual tangible products or services.
Sadly, we’ll even outsource our own nations “security”. And it will take an act of sabotage before there’s an oversight committee, and congressional hearings, and in the end, nothing will change. Just a bunch of chest beating.