The Evolution of RFID and Its Impact on IoT | Impinj's Matt Branda | E184

The Evolution of RFID and Its Impact on IoT | Impinj's Matt Branda | E184

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you are listening to the iot for all media network hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the iot for all podcast i'm your host ryan chicone and on today's episode we have matt brando the vice president of product management at impinge impinge is a leading provider and pioneer of rain rfid their business is focused on helping other companies and people analyze optimize and innovate by wirelessly connecting billions of devices around everyday things so apparel automotive parts luggage shipments connecting all that to the internet a very fascinating company great conversation today we talk a lot about rain rfid what it is kind of how it works how compares to just rfid a technology that i'm sure a lot of you are familiar with we talk about why right now is a really good time for rain rfid adoption adoption we talked about covid 19 and how it's accelerating the adoption of foreign rfid in the retail and supply chain space and then we talk about other challenges in in the industry that impinges seeing um how to scale trillions of devices um every year how to make items um connect more easily and develop solutions in that manner so a lot of great stuff here but before we get into this episode if any of you out there are looking to enter the fast growing and profitable iot market but don't know where to start check out our sponsor leverage leverages iot solutions development platform provides everything you need to create turnkey iot products that you can white label and resell under your own brand to learn more go to iot changes everything dot com that's iot changes everything dot com and without further ado please enjoy this episode of the iot for all podcast welcome matt to the iot for all show thanks for being here this week yeah thank you happy to be here absolutely we're glad to have you um let's kick this off by having you give a quick introduction about yourself any background information relevant experience things interesting for audience to know sure matt branda vice president of our connectivity products uh here at uh impinge i've been working in iot for over 20 years now doing various roles mostly focused on wireless technology um at impinge i'm responsible for a road map so i really am defining new products new technologies that we're bringing to market to connect uh the internet of things so you were in iot before it was iot uh yeah yeah yeah so for sure yes very cool uh so tell us a little bit more about in pin channel what what do you all do role you play in iot kind of an overview from that perspective yeah impinge uh is a leading provider uh in pioneer of uh rain rfid technology uh which is a a passive wireless technology um that we're utilizing uh with the industry uh to extend the internet of of things to actual things so if you look at the internet of things like i said i've been working in it for quite a while right to date it's been mostly internet of devices uh you know connecting smartphones smart energy meters smart appliances smart industrial equipment uh at impinge we're focused on connecting actual things everyday things uh and that gives us an opportunity to extend the iot by a factor of a thousand so when i say things i'm talking about you know your clothes uh your luggage your food items uh your tires uh are all things that were connecting to the internet uh image so tell me about um i think a good way to kind of bring this full circle for our audience is tell us a little bit about in a particular use cases of your technology in the market uh for a normal person that's listening to kind of get a sense of exactly what it's doing and the benefit of value it's providing versus what maybe was being done before sure sure so if you look at one use case i'd love to talk about because it has both the benefit to business enterprises as well as consumers is delta airlines is using our technology uh to tag their or to connect their luggage uh that's moving about an airport to track the and so from a delta airlines perspective it allows them to virtualize their operations they get visibility into those bag bags as they move across an airport so it optimizes their efficiency it shrinks their loss of luggage which is a big cost to airlines they extended that even further to the consumer and so in your your delta application you now have visibility into your back so as i'm sitting on an air airplane about to take off i can check my app and have visibility that that bag has indeed gotten on that plane gotcha and so that that tracking of items that connecting of of items is something our technology enables just out of curiosity what happens if you're on the plane checking your bag and it does not get on you how do you handle that is that is that in the app too yeah maybe maybe a thing you start to hit this but it was panicked flight i'd ever have yeah it's thinking myself on there uh so so what i want to ask you next um you mentioned about pioneering uh rain rfid we've talked about rfid um on the show before how does this differ and how does it compare what is the value it's providing as opposed to kind of what we all have come to know as on the rfid side sure yeah so one key aspect of the reynarff id is the passive rfid technology and so what i mean by passive is it's batteryless uh so when you talk about connecting things like a a luggage or uh clothes or a food item uh you know a battery is just not possible and so uh it's a passive rfid technology and then when you compare it to other passive rfid technologies that are also out there uh such as nfc that's utilized for for payments with your mobile phone right uh the difference with rain rfid really comes in the robustness of the link so it allows us to not to get much longer range ranges so up to 10 meters of range versus the proximal nature that you get with nfc but it also allows you to be connecting to thousands of items a population versus that one to one that you get with nfc and then all of that can be done with uh something that costs about you know pennies per item and so that really opens up the ability to connect things like parcel and clothing items and luggage but also brings utility that you don't get with something that's relatively short range that's line of sight and can only connect one to one and you know we've obviously and you know this better than i do the evolution of technology in the iot space how far it's come where we are now versus where we used to be why is now kind of why is it is it more possible now for technology like this to exist than it was five ten fifteen years ago well i think rfid has been evolving for a long period of time but i think why is now the right time for rain rfid is really the rising importance of data to enterprises and so when you look at you know for example the supply issues and the supply chain issues that we're hearing about in the news constantly yes part of that has to do to lack of inventory but it also has to do with lack of visibility into that inventory so sure why now is data is so important to enterprises and rain rfid really gives enterprises and consumers visibility into data about their most important things their assets that are moving across their supply chain whether it's in an airport a hospital a retail store uh or an industrial environment all of that is critically important to an enterprise not only to operate more efficiently but also to start to deliver more delightful experience to consumers is my package gonna arrive on time is my bag on the plane uh can i you know walk into a store and know that item is going to be there when i arrive at the store all of that is possible with better visibility into my inventory as not only when it's in a location but as it moves across the supply chain and out of curiosity because when we talk about supply chain it's been heavily connected to a lot of different things going on in the world and kova 19 is one of them how has kind of the pandemic and the everything that happened during the last number of years kind of accelerated the adoption of the technology particularly in the retail and supply chain space and and tell us a little bit more about kind of that evolution and implementation of the technology due to uh kind of what we've been going through with the pandemic yeah i mean these trends existed uh pre-pandemic but it definitely shown a light on what happens when you don't have efficient uh operations and in visibility into your inventory so if you look at retail retailers that have equipped their operations with rain rfid have been much more successful in dealing with some of the market dislocations as a result of covid a much bigger shift to e-commerce a much bigger shift to omni channel fulfillment where consumers are not just buying in the store they're buying online they're buying various different channels this is giving them the ability to know that item is gonna be where they're gonna where they say it's going to be when that consumer arrives and so what we're seeing is retailers that have made that investment are being able to react to these market dislocations in a much more efficient manner and now are looking for ways to optimize or take advantage of that investment for other things that the pandemic has brought to life so one of the key things that we're seeing with retailers after the pandemic is a need to for an acceleration a more frictionless uh checkout experience sure and so i've invested in radar if i did a track inventory in my store now i can utilize that technology to also enable self-checkout machines and a much more frictionless checkout experience have you seen a pivot or maybe reprioritization of certain use cases over the last two years because of the pandemic that may be going before we knew that obviously before the panic happened you all were thinking okay here are the use cases that are going to kind of lead the way that we're going to focus on and then do the pandemic it's kind of shifted potentially a lot of your customers or just you the demand for what is that you're doing to something maybe you were not expecting by chance i don't i don't think it is fundamentally changed the use cases i think where it's had probably the biggest impact is in supply chain and logistics which was in the early phases of adoption of rain rfid pre-pandemic has really accelerated as a result of of the demand on the supply chain as a result of the pandemic and so i think it's more of an acceleration not necessarily different applications that are emerging and through the development of this technology and which is very fascinating to kind of learn about here but more detail what are some of the biggest challenges that you all of a company have either overcome had to work through or at the same time have been seeing in the market that um uh that you've encountered that that um you know been able to kind of figure out a way around through the development of this and maybe that you're seeing across the board because obviously when it comes to scaling tons of devices that's obviously a tricky process in general uh things like that yeah i think i'll i'll focus on two the first one is on the actual items like connecting these things um you know scaling when i talk about you know we've shipped to date 60 billion integrated circuits uh to or chips to connect these items and that's a small percentage of the potential things you know less than a percent of the potential things that could be connected and so scaling from billions of items per year to trillions of items per year is a real challenge and that requires you know continued advancements in technology and really focus about around embedding though and making smaller and more embedded so that not only can you put a this technology on a tag or sticker that goes on this item but you can start to embed it into the packaging weave it into the tags that are on clothing that really opens up new new opportunities not only in the enterprise but that now those tags exist beyond the businesses and are out there in the world that you can start to possibly take advantage of and then the other challenge is uh we haven't talked a lot about the connectivity side um so you tag these items with a or with a passive technology you put a sticker or a tag or yeah or something to allow it to talk to the internet you need devices to connect to that uh and then connect to the internet to share that that item data right to date most of those devices have been specialized for rain rfid we call them readers because they're reading data um and those those they come in two primary forms a fixed reader that looks like a wi-fi okay router or they come in a handheld that looks kind of like a wand that sometimes you see uh an employee in a store walking around with inventory if you look moving forward as we scale the the utility of rain rfid moving forward i think one of the key challenges is moving from these specialized devices to embedding rain rfid connectivity into iot devices everywhere and so you get this you know you're carpeting the planet with read points to take advantage of those billions of items that are connected and so it allows rain rfid connectivity to be embedded into a wi-fi router to uh be embedded into a pos machine directly so it's it's not a specialized connectivity device it's embedded into that and so part of the technology that we've been working on is making that connectivity much smaller much lower power much more accessible to iot developers so that they can you know much wider range of developers can integrate it into a tablet into a robot into a pos machine into shelving in stores or in a closet so that you get more you more use cases can emerge if you can embed it into the iot devices that are already out there and if i'm listening to this as somebody who's coming across rain rfid for the first time what would you say to somebody trying to understand if this is the right technology for their individual use case what kind of characteristics of a use case or an iot solution or i guess problem they're trying to solve um would this is this more ideal for versus not as ideal for and how could people that are listening be thinking about where this fits into the general landscape when they're trying to build a solution or adopt a solution and make sure they have the right technology to fit the use case and not be overkill but also not perform poorly just just how does how does that kind of educational process go when you talk to potential customers yeah i think i think the key thing i would focus on is are you trying to get visibility into your items in inventory is that what you're trying to do is that the problem you're trying to solve with knowing where parcels are throughout your factory would that help you with knowing luggage where luggage is throughout your airport with that assist in solving some of the challenges that you're trying to discover because it's not intended if if you have a battery powered device i can connect that in other ways that's where other iot technologies like bluetooth and wi-fi and those technologies play very well but when i'm trying to connect and get data from something that can't afford to have a battery and i want to be able to track that item and know where that item is throughout my supply chain throughout my retail store for example that's where rain rfid really excels gotcha um and one question i had for you so with a new technology like this when we started iot for all back in 2016 one of the biggest gaps we saw on the market was just the educational component of technology in the iot space there's lots of different kinds of technology across all different areas whether it's the connectivity side the hardware side the software side you name it um and we felt like a lot of the non-technical adopters were having trouble really deciphering the difference between them figuring out what's right for them what's not right what even how things work when you all are working with and bringing a new technology to the market how has that educational process been for you um you know where have you seen kind of the biggest i guess challenges with with the educational side and where have it where's it really resonated with with an audience to understand what this technology is and what it does yeah i think it is a constant challenge because there's so many different technologies out there that solve problems in different ways and so if i'm a business and i'm trying to you know start my process of digital transformation there's tremendous amount of things coming at me i think you know that that's the challenge is there's so much noise out there is rising above the noise and i think you know i would say two things one uh what we found is focus focus on the use cases that bring the most value where we know and have proven that our technology can bring real value to enterprises and to consumers uh and bri you know and bring start with that you know start with that value and then bring the technology in because most people want to see how it's going to solve the problem first and then understand how the technology actually works the other thing is we have our rain alliance which is a an industry uh forum this is not a impinge only technology uh the rain alliance helps us in kind of promoting this worldwide standard uh across uh the industry and to uh industry retailers to hospitals to airlines so utilization of an alliance like that is really important when you talk about awareness and education absolutely yeah it's super fascinating to talk to anyone who's kind of very close to the creation and and the as you put earlier the pioneering of something new in the space just to kind of understand how you've been able to not just develop it but bring it to market and get people to understand and adopt adopt it um based around the value that it provides so it's super fascinating to kind of have this chat with you for audience out there who wants to learn more kind of get a better sense maybe follow with questions even what's the best way that they could do that i guess first go to www.impinge.com we have a lot of great information on our website not only about our products but also about the rain rfid technology uh in general and then uh yeah there's lots of information there too on how to contact impinge uh to receive more information fantastic um and last question i want to ask you is what does the future of this look like like where does this technology go what what what use cases maybe on the horizon that you're most excited about what kind of things is this going to enable that or or even what kind of uh i guess upgrades and new features and applications do you see this um this enabling yeah i think what i'm most excited about for the future uh we talked about a lot a lot about the use cases that are happening right now is the possibility uh and the real possibility of rain rfid extending into the consumer world and so as you start to not only embed the uh the tags into items that are now in the consumer world but embed the reading technology into consumer iot devices you can envision vision smart appliances being able to read food for an example or your doorbell being able to read your parcel that was delivered on your on your steps and so i'm really excited about the opportunities where the technology is evolving uh of of emerging beyond just solving enterprise problems but solving real consumer problems as well absolutely yeah it's the more i'm i've learned about this technology and this and through this conversation even it just you can your your brain can't just go crazy thinking about all the potential applications and that's it's super super fascinating um you know it's been great to just kind of have more exposure to everything going on in impinge since since we were introduced to each other uh a number of months back and we really look forward to kind of getting more information about this out so so matt thanks again for taking your time today thank you for sharing your expertise yeah it's been great um we're going to have us doing some more content around solutions and and hardware and other types of things i think will be very applicable to kind of bring you in to talk about from your perspective so we'll find other opportunities to work together but this is a great first first piece of content that your audience is going to get a ton of value out of yeah it's great talking to you ryan thank you yeah all right everyone thanks again for watching that episode of the iot fall podcast if you enjoyed the episode please click the thumbs up button subscribe to our channel and be sure to hit the bell notification so you get the latest episodes as soon as you become available other than that thanks again for watching and we'll see you next time

2022-05-17 23:49

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