News

Looks like a bag. But it's a Bluetooth wireless device

Lost your bag at the airport? Don't worry; it will phone you to say where it has got to.

Built into the traveller's luggage in the future, small wireless Bluetooth tags - invented by Blue Tags - will be able to track not just the baggage, but the owner of the baggage, through every part of the airport.

Will it work? A trial is currently under way in Denmark's main airport, Billung, where the tags are matched up with wireless computer networking, so that the airport operators can see exactly where everything is.

Not only can they track the luggage, but they can also authenticate the owner.

Built into the Blue Tags is the ability to store data about the person who owns the baggage. As the bag is scanned, the image of the owner can be retrieved from the database of frequent travellers; and matched. If they aren't the same as the person trying to check the bag through, questions get asked. If the baggage is checked onto the flight, but the owner is somewhere else, alarms go off. And when it comes to finding the bag in the aircraft hold, it knows where it is.

Blue Tags CEO, Carlos Ostby, suggests that frequent travellers will find this "enhances" their airport experience. One example of convenience for the traveller offered is that the luggage can send an SMS text message to its owner when it gets to the carousel, freeing up the long and frustrating time spent wondering when it will be unloaded from the aircraft for other more productive use.

Key to the use of the tag technology, is a wireless network capable of interfacing to normal IT equipment. All the tag data is picked up by "hot spots" around the airport, which are installed using access points from Red-M, and using Red-M's Genos operating software. The software allows programmers to write their own control programs to track the tags.

Right now, the airport authorities don't seem to be prepared to discuss the possibility of tagging the owners themselves. The airport manager says only: "Information related to the passengers' unique Bluetooth identification appears on a screen in front of the security officer" but this is read from the baggage tag. There's no tag for the baggage owner - and if there are plans to do this, they aren't being discussed yet.

The current test has volunteers, who have provided personal information. This isn't just name, address, email, and so on. "Information such as a photograph, fingerprint or iris scan can be stored on the tag allowing the officer to swiftly ascertain the BlueTag carrier's identity and allow the individual to proceed," says the airport management.

The hope is that tagged baggage will make life so much easier for its owner, that people will want to sign up for the scheme. It may well work for frequent flyers.

However, it's not going to be easy to do it for everybody. The time taken to get simple basic details into the system is not going to be trivial, and casual travellers would probably find it greatly delays them.

And signing the forms allowing the airport to hold this data under privacy laws, and to share it with other airports, will require more rights than is possible under most European data protection legislation.