Road of the future: Simon Sennitt (left), a technician from Cambridge University’s Institute for Manufacturing, explains the radio frequency identification system that could soon enable cars to report their own servicing needs, in a demonstration on a test car with a diagnosis pad in front.AN “INTELLIGENT” system that could - before long - enable cars to point out to mechanics what parts need servicing has been put on show by engineers.

　　Demonstrated in an adapted Fiat prototype at Fiat’s research centre in Turin, Italy - and presented to a wider audience at a European technology exhibition earlier this year - the system allows the car to inform garage staff about the status of its components in seconds by using electronic tags inside its engine and in other areas.

　　The system has been designed by researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing, in England. In conjunction with the necessary software, it could be used to speed servicing and even to identify what parts can be recycled when the vehicle reaches the end of its life.

　　Combining such information from many cars would have the further advantage of pinpointing parts of a vehicle that need redesigning. And in those rare cases that a faulty batch of cars reaches dealers’ showrooms, the technique could instantly single out what models need to be recalled, before they are sold.

　　Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, each with its unique identification number, are attached to various car components. To check its servicing needs, the vehicle is driven at low speed over a one-metre-square servicing pad that is fitted with an ultra-high frequency reader and four antennae.

　　As the car passes over the pad, the reader transmits the ID number from the electronic tags to a computer. By cross-referring this information with a computerised database - for example one showing the parts’ date and manufacturer - mechanics would be able to identify those parts that needed to be checked for wear at the click of a mouse.

　　Professor Duncan McFarlane, of the Institute for Manufacturing, said: “Ultimately, motorists could be driving into a garage over the same sort of sensor which would instantly tell both the driver and the garage staff which parts needed replacing and which might be good for several thousand miles more.

　　“But there are potentially great benefits beyond this as well. When the car is sent to be scrapped, for example, RFID tagging could be used to identify which parts still have a useful life left in them. The system will tell the car producer whether separate parts can be reused, recycled or need to be disposed of in landfill. It will also highlight which parts need improving for a longer life.”

　　The demonstrator vehicle forms part of an international European Union-funded project called Promise (short for Product Lifecycle Management & Information Tracking Using Smart Embedded Systems). The Promise consortium includes 22 partners from nine countries.

　　“The Promise system has much wider potential as well,” added Professor McFarlane. “It allows us to trace and update information about any product, after its delivery to the customer and up to the end of its useful life. In time it could be possible to tag all sorts of products, components and even airport baggage and boarding passes.”

　　The Cambridge Auto-ID laboratory is one of seven labs worldwide that is leading research efforts in the area of automated identification of objects in the supply chain.

　　The lab has been involved in this area since 2000 when it joined the ground-breaking Auto-ID Center project (1999-2003), a partnership between almost 100 global companies and six of the world’s leading research universities.

　　They are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US; Cambridge University, UK; the University of Adelaide, Australia; Keio University, Japan; the University of St Gallen, Switzerland, and Fudan University in China. They were set up to create the standards and assemble the building blocks needed to create a “global infrastructure” - a layer on top of the Internet, or “Internet of things”.

　　Radio frequency identification is a simple concept with enormous implications. Putting an RFID tag - a microchip with an antenna - on a product such as a drinks can, a T-shirt or a car axle enables a computer to “see” and recognise it.

　　Putting tags on every drinks can, every T-shirt and every car axle and so on, could revolutionise the way that industry and commerce operate, for instance by providing automated inventory counts, obviating lost or misdirected shipments, and proving reliable information on how much material is in the supply chain or how much product is on store shelves.

　　(Source: British Consulate-General in Chongqing)