RFID helps airport utility workers

Airports are a division of travel that is constantly improving and relentlessly evolving. Recently, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has buried more than 1,000 RFID-enabled marker balls around a new runway at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

The marker balls, supplied by 3M's Communication Markets Division, allow the FAA, airport employees and contractors to use handheld RFID interrogators to locate utility cables and pipes buried 5 feet underground, determine what type of infrastructure they represent and who owns that infrastructure.

The gates opened for this approach about two years ago when the FAA opened conversations with 3M about the possibility of positioning underground RFID marker balls. Last year, as construction advanced on a new 9,000-foot runway at the airport, the FAA began using them whenever a new cable was installed underground.