Ferret: An RFID-enabled pervasive multimedia application

This paper presents the design and implementation of Ferret, a system for locating nomadic augmented with RFID tags and visually displaying them to a user in real-time. We present a novel algorithm to infer location of tagged objects using the location of a camera and reader that observes them. We also present techniques to refine location estimates using multiple observations and a method to display and update object locations on a video camera screen. An experimental evaluation of the Ferret prototype shows that (i) Ferret can refine object locations to only 1% of the reader’s coverage region in less than 2 min with small error rate (2.22%); (ii) Ferret can detect nomadic objects with 100% accuracy when the moving distances exceed 20 cm; and (iii) Ferret is robust against different movement patterns of user’s mobility.