Fast Scans For Fast Times
Laser scanners already are pretty darn fast, and thousands of companies use them in their supply chains to capture bar-code or radio-frequency identification tag information, such as inventory levels.
Laser scanners already are pretty darn fast, and thousands of companies use them in their supply chains to capture bar-code or radio-frequency identification tag information, such as inventory levels. But what happens when you throw in a little nanotechnology, the science that develops materials at the molecular level?
Intermec's EL10 scan engine can operate at 500 scans per second. |
Intermec Technologies Corp., in conjunction with the Fraunhaufer Institute, has spent the last five years doing just that. The result: a new scan engine that Intermec says can operate at 500 scans per second, with the potential to go to 4,000 scans per second. That's nano-times faster than today's typical scan rates of less than 50 per second.
The engine, called the Intermec EL10, employs microelectromechanical systems, a type of nanotechnology used in sensors in anti-lock brakes and airbags. The EL10's micromirror is 1/66th the size of the mirrors used in conventional laser scanners, about the size of a sugar cube.
The engine will be available in some of Intermec's scanners by year's end. "It's jumped us to the next technology curve," says Dan Bodnar, Intermec's director of data-capture product strategy. "Because it scans so much faster, we can take it all the way to using the device to read two-dimensional bar codes, which carry much more information, such as data on products that might contain spoilage or shelf-life information." The technology could also help out with passive RFID, which doesn't require line-of-sight scanning, by projecting a beam onto an RFID tag that lets people know that the scanner is actually aimed at the right spot.
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