Mobile robots could be much more useful in homes, if they
could locate people, places and objects. Today’s robots usually see the world
with cameras and lasers, which have difficulty reliably recognizing things and
can miss objects that are hidden in clutter. A complementary way robots can
“sense” what is around them is through the use of small ultra-high frequency
radio-frequency identification (UHF RFID) tags. Inexpensive self-adhesive tags
can be stuck on objects, allowing an RFID-equipped robot to search a room for
the correct tag’s signal, even when the object is hidden out of sight. Once the
tag is detected, the robot knows the object it’s trying to find isn’t far away.