In the inventory management, shipping and logistics fields, barcodes are generally still the most prevalent way in which items are tagged for identification and tracking. Among the problems associated with them, barcode labels require that the optical scanner reading them have a clear “line-of-sight” view of the tag being read. This may require the scanner operator to position the scanner with respect to the barcode label in a manner that is awkward or may even be impossible depending upon the location of the tag. For example, if the barcode label to be read is on a box inside of a pallet of boxes, it may not be possible to read the label without disassembling the pallet. Furthermore, barcode labels can be scraped, marked, or otherwise obscured, rendering them difficult to read.
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology is one approach that can be used to solve the deficiencies of barcode labels as described herein. RFID tags do not require “line-of-sight” to read the tag, and thus RFID tags are expected to lead to major efficiencies and reduced costs for inventory management, shipping and logistics. In addition, in 2004, the Department of Defense and major US retailers began to require their vendors to tag items with RFID tags, making it a necessity for many companies to adopt RFID technology in their product and service offerings.
The relevant industries generally recognize a distinction between read-only RFID tags and writable RFID tags. In the former case, the RFID tag is manufactured with prestored data, and it cannot be subsequently modified. To the contrary, writable RFID tags permit data to be written into the RFID tag. The present invention is related to the latter variety of RFID tag.
At present, it is known that there are RFID printers that have the ability to write data into a tag, subsequently read that data, and verify that the RFID tag data was correctly written to the tag by the RFID printer. This form of RFID tag validation ensures that the printer wrote the RFID tag data correctly to the tag. However, it is not generally known in these circumstances whether the RFID tag data received by the printer was correct in terms of its format and content. Further, RFID printers are not effective devices for interactively informing users of such formatting and content errors, and enabling users to correct such data errors. An unsatisfied need thus exists for systems and methods for validating RFID tag data prior to sending the data to a printer for writing the data into an RFID tag.