VingCard Elsafe and Lancaster University Earn Top Awards at WIMA in Monaco
WAKEFIELD, Mass., USA, April 30, 2008 The NFC Forum (www.nfc-forum.org), a non-profit industry association that advances the use of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, today announced the winners of its Touching the Future: NFC Forum Global Competition.
In the competition, developers in a Commercial Track vied for the honor of having their solutions named “The Best NFC Service of the Year 2008“, while a Research Track recognized “The Most Innovative NFC Research Project of the Year 2008“. First-, second- and third-place winners in each track were chosen by a jury composed of senior and recognized professionals and experts from academia and sponsoring companies. The winners were selected from a total of 20 finalists and over 50 entries from 21 countries. The competition finalists demonstrated their entries at the NFC Developers Summit taking place this week at WIMA in Monaco. The winning entries were announced last night at the competition awards ceremony.
The first-place winner in the Commercial Track is VingCard Elsafe of Norway for its “Signature RFID by VingCard - Electronic Lock for Hotels.” This solution enables hotel guests with NFC-enabled mobile phones to completely bypass the check-in process and unlock their hotel room doors using their phones.
The first-place winner in the Research Track is Lancaster University of the UK for “Touch & Interact: Applied to a Tourist Guide Prototype.” This project uses NFC technology to allow mobile phone handsets and public information screens to share display space, thereby overcoming the screen size limitations of mobile phone displays.
“We congratulate VingCard and Lancaster University for prevailing against dozens of very competitive solutions submitted this year,” said Gerhard Romen, NFC Forum vice chairman. “Both winning submissions demonstrate how effective NFC technology can be in supporting creative, yet simple and elegant, solutions to real-world problems from unlocking hotel doors to enhancing users’ interactions with their mobile phones.“
The second-place winner in the Commercial Track is Hansaprint of Finland for its “TagAge” solution. Teliasonera of Sweden took third place for “Telia Kvittens.”
In the Research Track, University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis MBDS of France came in second for “Ticket Tap” while third place was awarded to Austria’s University of Applied Sciences for its “Theft Deterrent System for Skis.”
The NFC Forum Global Competition promotes the development and deployment of innovative and exemplary NFC services. The Commercial Track is for NFC services based on a business case; the Research Track is for university students and Research institutions. Both Tracks require a prototype.
Commercial Track entries are evaluated on how successfully and innovatively they meet the needs of key vertical market segments, as well as quality of design and implementation. Research Track submissions are judged on creativity and innovativeness.
VingCard Elsafe, the Commercial Track winner, introduced its Signature RFID electronic lock for hotels in June 2006. It is compatible with ISO 14443 A (MIFARE), 14443 B, and 15693, and is also NFC-compatible. Therefore, NFC-enabled mobile phones can work as RFID carriers to open Signature RFID by VingCard electronic locks. By offering this service, hotels benefit from: significant improvement in guest service perception; and increased turnover and bottom line results through higher direct sales at higher margin. By securely sending a text message to the guest’s NFC-enabled mobile phone with the encrypted key, together with the hotel information and room number, it allows guests to go straight to their rooms without having to go through the check-in/check-out process. At checkout, guests use their NFC-enabled mobile phones to check out directly through the NFC-enabled TV in the room or the NFC-enabled automatic check-in/check-out kiosk. Guests receive their invoices either through text message or printed out at the check-out kiosk. Guests can also receive updates to their hotel loyalty membership cards via text message.
Touch & Interact, the Research Track winner from Lancaster University, addresses the limited output capabilities of mobile phones, which are an ongoing issue for mobile application developers. For this reason, current mobile phones may still fail to fully address the requirements of map, multimedia and information browsing applications. Touch & Interact is an NFC interaction technique that utilizes the capabilities of mobile phones and the screen size of public displays. Using the Touch & Interact interaction technique, an NFC phone can touch the display at any position in order to perform selections. During the interaction, both the phone display and public display share the display space. The shared display space is especially useful for separation of public and private information by presenting sensitive information on the phone display. In addition to an auxiliary display, the phone provides extra modalities (e.g. joystick and keypad), storage and additional feedback (audio and haptic).
Gold sponsors of the competition are NFC Forum members Nokia, Over-C and SCM Microsystems. Silver sponsors are NFC Forum members Innovision Research & Technology plc, Inside Contactless, Stollman E+V GmbH and WIMA.
