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Location tracking and video surveillance--for your kids

Peter at Engadget reported earlier on a system using Bluetooth tags to track children at the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. Errant children can be located by sending a text message from a cellphone asking where the tag is.

Japan, of course, has to go one better. The Nikkei Shimbun newspaper reports that NTT and Dainippon Printing have built a system aimed at kindergartens that allows parents to keep a remote eye on their children using a system of RFID tag readers and webcams in classrooms. Parents log into a website and enter their child's details, a server at the kindergarten determines the child's location using an RFID chip built into their nametag, and it then streams video from the appropriate camera back to the parents' PC. Given the price that RFID tags and readers are set to fall to, it sounds like the kind of system that we could definitely be seeing more of in future.

[Via the Nikkei Shimbun (Japanese)]

[Update: According to a Kyodo News article, the system costs Y3 mn and includes 80 tags and 4 cameras. We assume that it includes the tag readers, a server, and some cables to, like, hook everything together too.]