Patent ID: 9704003
Date: 2017-07-11
CPC Classifications: A63F,A63H,G01S,G06K

Claim:
1. An apparatus, comprising: one or more pieces, each piece being positionable in one or more of plural piece positions of a region, and including a passive radio frequency identification (RFID) tag to store information relating to a characteristic of the piece; an arrangement of one or more RFID antennas to be positioned proximal to the region; a RFID reader; and one or more processors coupled with the RFID reader to determine the piece positions of the one or more pieces from reads of the one or more RFID antennas and to provide control of the apparatus according to the one or more pieces and their piece positions, wherein the one or more RFID antennas include plural RFID antennas and the one or more processors further are to determine the piece position of at least one of the one or more pieces according to reads of more than one of the plural RFID antennas, and the apparatus further comprises a multiplexer to couple the RFID reader to the one or more processors to provide multiplexed reads of the plural RFID antennas, wherein the multiplexed reads of the plural RFID antennas include multiplexed transmission of interrogation signals from the plural RFID antennas, each RFID tag is to provide indications of signal strength of one or more of the interrogation signals received by the RFID tag, and the one or more processors are to determine the piece position of at least one of the pieces according to the indications of signal strength of the one or more of the interrogation signals received by the RFID tag of the at least one of the pieces.