Patent ID: 8552834

Claim:
A system for locating a particular item from among a plurality of items identifiable by radio frequency identification (RFID) tags associated with the items, comprising: an interrogator for radio frequency (RF) signaling the tags to detect unique identifiers associated with the tags in a field of view of the interrogator; and an optical signaler for optically signaling one of the tags in the field of view to designate the particular item to be located, wherein the optical signaler includes an optical sensor on each tag, and an optical designator supported by a user for aiming and directing a light beam to the optical sensor on the one tag to designate the one tag, wherein the optical designator is a laser source for emitting the light beam as a laser beam to the optical sensor on the one tag, and wherein the optical sensor is a laser light detector for detecting the laser beam incident on the one tag, wherein the laser beam has a significantly narrow beam width enabling the selection of only one RFID tag at a time as selected RFID tag; wherein more than one RFID tag responds to the RF signal from the interrogator with a reply to be received by the interrogator, but an optical-activated RFID tag that is detecting the laser beam includes a message in its reply that includes both an unique identification of the optical-activated RFID tag and information indicating that the optical-activated RFID tag is being optically designated.