Students explore NFC's potential in search for wireless technology's killer app

02.11.2012
Students at the University of Technology, Sydney this week showcased ideas for using the short-range Near Field Communications (NFC) wireless technology present in many of the current generation of smartphones.

The UTS 'Launchpad' event represented the culmination of a semester's work by students, and involved five inter-disciplinary teams from backgrounds including IT, business and design designing NFC-based solutions in domains including retail and healthcare, aged care.

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Some 18 students examined potential applications for use of NFC technology. The event was run by UTS's u.lab in partnership with NFC-focussed Australian company Commerce in Motion. "[Commerce in Motion is ] looking for some slightly more out-of-the-box ideas of what to do with NFC rather than maybe the run-of-the-mill ideas that people usually come up with," said UTS's Dr Wayne Brookes, who co-founded u.lab.

One team developed an NFC-based solution that attempted to find a way of engaging children in physical activity by employing the wireless technology in combination with gamification-like principles. "They came up with the idea of creating a virtual playground where you put NFC tags around a particular area and the kids have an NFC-enabled mobile phone, and the kids will have to physically run from point to point to progress in the game," Brookes said.

"The interesting thing about the proposal was that the team saw that if you were to install these kinds of NFC tags around an environment using it for children and games, you could easily use it for adults who were wanting to come up with a different sort of exercise regime. [Or] you could use the infrastructure when you could have an event and people come to it and tap their phone at the destination. So it's kind of like a gathering place for people if you wanted to organise an event in a park, for example.