Vehicles tagged by RFID

The initiative is aimed to encourage the greater adoption of RFID technology nationwide through government enforcement. The Transport Ministry and the Science and Technology Ministry are working together to turn the concept into policy.

Thaweesak Koanatakool, vice president for Science and Technology Investment at NSTDA, said the project was initiated by NSTDA and proposed to the Department of Land Transport. As a result, the initiative will become a trial national RFID project with wider adoption this year.

The Department of Land Transport will introduce regulations to force all vehicle owners to renew their annual vehicle tax with the new stickers having an RFID tag embedded within. The RFID-tax sticker contains information such car identification, name of owner and tax records.

"Every year, around 2.5 million new cars require a registration sticker, and about 25 million vehicles are required to renew their old stickers. With these huge numbers, the project will open opportunities for local software and applications related to RFID technology," said Thaweesak.

Once the department rolled out the new stickers it would deploy RFID readers on selected roads during the trial period. With RFID tags embedded inside each vehicle, the department can use the RFID readers to automatically determine whether each car on the road has paid the annual tax or not.

Thaweesak said that it should be a passive UHF RFID tag that can be detected within a distance of 10 metres, even if the vehicle is moving at  60 kilometres per hour.

The price of the sticker will increase from Bt100 to Bt200 as a result of the extra technology. The government would support the extra cost during the initial phase with a limited number of vehicles. "Once car owners see the benefits of the new tag they will be willing to pay for it themselves," Thaweesak said.

This year, it will be launched as an initial pilot project. The pilot period will be a few months with a limited number of cars, and limited areas on selected roads in Bangkok where RFID readers will be stationed.

Many other organisations are interested in participating, including the Royal Thai Police, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, the Expressway & Rapid Transit Authority of Thailand, and private sector interests such as car parks and department stores. This move is beneficial not only for the Department of Land Transport in terms of management of the annual tax collection, but it is also beneficial for these other parties as well.

"The deployment of RFID readers on the roads will help the department keep track of each vehicle automatically. This technology will encourage many departments to take advantage of many more kinds of applications," said Thaweesak.

"For instance, expressway operators can facilitate cars which have an embedded RFID tag with fast lanes at toll gates that accept electronic money through wireless communication.

 "Not only expressways, commercial car parks and department stores can apply this kind of application to assist their customers with faster access through the parking area as well as improve their management of the flow of cars. They can do this from the better databases they will have after applying RFID technology. More and more business models can be initiated because of the multipurpose nature of RFID technology," said Thaweesak.

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation