The Auto-ID Center is an independent, not-for-profit global research organization headquartered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Founding sponsors were the Uniform Code Council (UCC), Gillette, and Procter & Gamble. EAN International participated by invitation. Founded in 1999, the Auto-ID Center's vision is of a world where computers will be able to identify any object, anywhere, instantly. Further, the Center's mission is to design the infrastructure to create a universal, open network for identifying individual products and for tracking them as they flow through the global supply chain. The Center has sister labs at the University of Cambridge in England, Adelaide University in Australia, Keio University in Japan, Fudan University in China and St. Gallen University in Switzerland. Together they are creating the standards and assembling the building blocks needed to create an "Internet of things." |
