Overview of AIDC technology
For many years the identification technology industry has been struggling to find the form of words and the acronym that precisely sums up what it does, in the light of continuous technical advances and increasing use. With so many differing technologies under the umbrella - such as Barcodes, radio frequency identification (RFID), Smartcardsand Biometrics and so many applications for their use, it has never been easy to arrive at a satisfactory or memorable conclusion.
AIDC has been chosen because it best describes the basic activity of most of the technologies: Automatic Identification and (automatic) Data Capture. These are technologies that are embedded-in, attached to, accompany or use the natural features of an item for identification. The data captured using AIDC technologies is invariably in computer usable format.
So, for instance, the Barcodes seen printed on every product in a supermarket - either as part of the packaging or on a label - has (usually) black and white stripes representing numbers and letters which form a code that can be used to retrieve information from a database.
Two Dimensional Codes many of which look a bit like miniature crossword puzzles and are increasingly seen on tax and other official documents, carry much more information - up to 2,000 characters - which can be accessed on site without having to check a database.
RFID is actually a range of technologies all using tags to contain coded information. The data is read from (and applied to) the tags via a radio link. The tags don't have to be seen to be read.
A Smartcard is a card that has a small computer chip embedded in it that can store relatively large amounts of changeable information such as personal data, cash values, signatures, iris scans, thumbprints and photographs for comparison with the real thing.
Biometric ID provides unique identification of an individual, using features such as faces, hands, eyes, blood vessel patterns and fingerprints. It is part of a wider-ranging technology called natural feature recognition.
Basic information available on BARCODES RFID SMARTCARDS BIOMETRICS Other AIDC technologies Future developments in AIDC
