Radio Frequency Identification for Educational Gaming using Mobile Devices

Abstract

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a location determination technology that has been receiving a lot of commercial attention in recent times, especially in the areas of asset tracking and supply chain management. The technology makes use of radio frequency communication to transfer data between the two key components of an RFID system, the tag and the reader. Location based gaming, also known as urban gaming, combines the physical activity and social interaction of classic games with the modern age digital games. These games incorporate the services of location determination technologies and mobile devices to offer the user an exciting and unique game play experience. It is emerging as an increasingly popular form of gaming. However, current technologies employed for many location based games incur limitations that could hinder the success and growth of the area. RFID is a possible solution to this problem. Matching Shapes is a mobile based game for a PDA based on scanning a matching pair of tags in sequence. The objective is to demonstrate the viability of using RFID as a location determination technology for location based games.