New wireless system from MIT uses RFID to sense potential food contamination

Researchers at MIT Media Lab, US, have developed a wireless system that leverages the cheap Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags already on hundreds of billions of products to sense potential food contamination –  with no hardware modifications needed. With the simple, scalable system, the researchers hope to bring food-safety detection to the general public. The researchers’ system, called RFIQ (Radio Frequency IQ), includes a reader that senses minute changes in wireless signals emitted from RFID tags when the signals interact with food. For this study, the team focused on baby formula and alcohol, but in the future, consumers might have their own reader and software to conduct food-safety sensing before buying virtually any product.