Laszló Szuszkó, ODIN Technologies Hungary

"The RFID system has proven to be a very economical and efficient way to manage the care of the trees on Budapest's Margaret Island."

Laszló Szuszkó – Managing Director, ODIN Technologies Hungary

How does your company use RFID technology?
ODIN Technologies Budapest is a subsidiary of ODIN Technologies, which is headquartered in the United States. The office here in Hungary was launched in 2006, and we're working on building market presence in continental European. We've run a number of successful pilot projects and we've helped launch full-scale implementations, too.

Let's talk about one of those live projects: Tell us about Margaret Island?
This is a particularly interesting case study indeed. As you may know, the Danube River runs through the city of Budapest. In the middle of the Danube is a small island, about 2.5 kilometres long and 500 meters wide, called Margaret Island. It is mostly parks and recreation areas, and aside from one public bus line and the occasional taxi, there are no cars. Budapest's municipal gardening service teams maintain the trees, flowers and lawns of Margaret Island.

How has RFID come into play here?
There are about 9,000 trees on Margaret Island, and to maintain them efficiently, the gardeners need to know when they were planted, where they were grown as seedlings, what treatments and sprays they have already received and what they need to receive in the future, and so forth. There is a huge database of information about the trees. Keeping this database up to date was becoming a complicated and time-consuming job, so the Budapest gardening service launched a project to study how they might make it easier. They considered tagging each tree with an aluminium or plastic ID tag; they studied using GPS. But ultimately, the technology that made the most sense and brought the most value was RFID.

Across 2009, ODIN help the gardening service teams set up a complete system. The teams drilled small holes in all of the trees, slipped an RFID tag in each hole and then sealed it back up with the original 'plug.' The holes are all completely invisible, which was one of the requirements of the project.

By using a hand-held RFID reader, the gardeners can log information about the trees and the actual maintenance process as they work, and this information is fed into a database. About two-thirds of the 9,000 trees on Margaret Island are now managed using this RFID system, and the rest will be tagged across 2010. We performed a comparative study of RFID readers and tags in our lab and we selected the ones with the appropriate performance. We also developed a special software application to follow the gardening processes.

Is your customer pleased with the results?
Very much so: The RFID system has proven to be a very economical and efficient way to manage the care of the trees on the island.

What is your vision for RFID in the future?
So many pilot projects have shown that this technology is reliable and efficient. Customers around the world are convinced by the benefits of RFID. We're seeing more and more live implementations.

ODIN Technologies Budapest, as the regional center of ODIN Technologies, plays an important role in RFID deployments and tests in Europe. Among its references are Airbus, ENI, Teva Hungary, Cisco, Hungarian National Post, and Unilever. ODIN Technologies Budapest benefits from the advanced protocols, methodology and software developed by the world’s leading RFID Company, ODIN Technologies, specifically customized for Europe and ETSI standards. For more information, see www.ODINbudapest.hu and www.ODINtechnologies.com.