IntelliBadge™ technology to be showcased at SC02

by Herb Morgan

NCSA's new technology, IntelliBadge™, will be showcased at SC2002. NCSA's Experimental Technologies Division provided the impetus for this technology—to find a way to "personalize" a conference attendee's experience in a convention center setting, according to Volodymyr Kindratenko, research scientist at NCSA and technical lead of the IntelliBadge project.

Kindratenko said that they were searching for a technology that would allow a conference participant to keep track of the events and to locate people to meet. The attendee could access this information on site (at the convention center) or later, at his or her convenience, by logging onto a Web site. The system could locate the attendee, identify which events he or she attended, and supply personalized information to the attendee about those events. Personalized information would be based on stored data in a database and distributed to the attendee based on information supplied by that attendee regarding his or her level of interest in each conference topic.

Donna Cox, Experimental Technologies Division Director at NCSA and developer of the IntelliBadge project, said that IntelliBadge technology will be put to work for the first time at SC2002. The technology is based on radio frequency identification (RFID) used primarily in tracking packages and supplies. RFID incorporates the use of electromagnetic or electrostatic coupling in the radio frequency portion of the electromagnetic spectrum to identify uniquely, in this case, a person. RFID does not require direct contact or line-of-sight scanning.

Many RFID systems consist of two components: a tag (or badge as it's called in IntelliBadge), which is the transponder, and a reader, which is the antenna and the transceiver. The reader's antenna uses radio frequency waves to transmit a signal to the badge, which then transmits its data back to the reader. Once captured, the data is transferred through an interface to a database.

The RFID system used in the IntelliBadge project incorporates a third component: the signpost. Signposts are strategically placed to identify precise locations of the badge. They continuously transmit their unique ID over radio waves in a 132 kHz frequency band. RFID badges pick up the signpost's ID from a maximum distance of eight feet. They then pass a signpost's ID along with their own unique ID to the reader, which can be located up to 300 feet away, over a long-range UHF link, thus, providing precise information about the badge's current location.

There will be seven readers and 21 signposts at SC2002. Savi Technology of Sunnyvale, California is the supplier for RFID technology (called EchoPoint) for the conference.

IntelliBadge participants will be tracked throughout the entire conference space and their locations will be stored in a MySQL database, which also includes the conference program, information about the layout of the Baltimore convention center, information about RFID equipment to be deployed, the distance between different locations in the convention center, and other data.

IntelliBadge participation starts with registration. Six kiosks will be placed in the registration area of the conference. From a kiosk, the participant will be led through the registration process and given a login and password for the IntelliBadge system. Each participant will also receive an electronic badge. Badges have a battery life of about five years and a signal radius of about 300 feet.

Participants will also be asked, on a voluntary basis, to fill in user profiles with information such as name, organization, address, email, and ten areas of interests (e.g. visualization, networking, etc.). Those who register for technical sessions may participate either anonymously or as named participants. All data are entered into the database for tracking and retrieval. During the conference, data will be collected from RFID equipment, such as tracked location and mileage, via software developed at NCSA.

Once registered, a participant can access this data and interact with it by simply scanning the badge at any kiosk, and then entering his or her password. Access is also available through the IntelliBadge Web portal.

IntelliBadge users can query the database to locate another user at the conference, to find other users with similar or specified interests, to find events of interest, to find a restaurant in the area, and to find out the distance the user walked within the conference space. According to Cox, users will be able to view visualizations of data on two 50-inch plasma panels and three six-foot-by-eight-foot rear projection screens. JVC donated two projectors and a lens for this project.

Data will be graphically interpreted by using several visualization schemas. One image schema, "Conference at a Glance," shows a continuous timeline of events and sessions at the conference. Ratios of people are graphed by their professional interests into technical sessions and onto the exhibition floor. Another image schema provides a state tables game that enables clever attendees to find themselves and their friends. Yet another visualization, "How Does Your Conference Grow," consists of flower images whose petals indicate the ten color-coded areas of interest. Each flower and individual petal will grow or shrink based upon the ebb and flow of the changing data. Within the same visualization, ants enter and exit an anthill depicting the data picked up from the badges as users enter and leave a room.

Users will also be able to visualize data represented on a geographical map. A video camera, set up at each of the three rear-projection screens, captures an IntelliBadge user's image and displays it on a portion of the screen. A nearby signpost allows that user's badge ID to be read and, based upon that participant's data, a flag appears on the map, indicating where that user is from.

IntelliBadge feedback from conference data will help conference organizers understand flow patterns of attendees at the conference, and allow them to better plan for future events. NCSA is exploring this new technology to increase overall awareness about what's going on at the conference and, on a larger scale, to promote better community interaction.