LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec 11, 2025--
Hanshow, a global leader in digital retail technology, has launched a multi-year research partnership with the University of Cambridge to develop next-generation Augmented RFID systems powered by distributed hardware architectures. The collaboration brings together Cambridge’s world-leading expertise in ultra-low-power sensing and communication with Hanshow’s industrial-scale deployment capabilities, aiming to set a new technological benchmark for the global retail sector.
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As retailers worldwide transition to increasingly automated, data-rich, and energy-efficient store environments, demand is rising for IoT systems that can sense, adapt and operate reliably at scale. The partnership will tackle this challenge head-on by integrating Cambridge research in intelligent sensing, energy harvesting and algorithmic optimisation with Hanshow’s edge-computing platforms and extensive real-world retail data infrastructure.
The joint project will explore new classes of intelligent RFID antennas, ultra-low-power communication modules and self-sustaining RFID nodes capable of ambient energy harvesting. By combining theoretical modelling, simulation and in-store experimentation, the team aims to dramatically improve signal coverage, data fidelity and resilience in complex retail environments.
For Cambridge researchers, the collaboration offers an opportunity to demonstrate how state-of-the-art engineering in distributed hardware systems can deliver measurable commercial and societal impact. For Hanshow, it provides a direct innovation pathway to future AIoT-driven retail solutions that enhance operational accuracy, reduce energy consumption and support more sustainable, responsive store infrastructures.
“With this collaboration, Hanshow is taking a decisive step toward reshaping the technological backbone of future retail,” said Min Liang, CTO of Hanshow. “Working with Cambridge enables us to convert advanced research into scalable, intelligent systems that deliver meaningful value for retailers worldwide.”
“By combining our work in low-energy, high-efficiency hardware with Hanshow’s global innovation capacity, we can accelerate the arrival of truly adaptive retail IoT,” said Associate Professor Michael Crisp, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge. “This partnership is a powerful example of how academic–industry collaboration can drive real-world impact.”
The programme will progress through a series of research milestones and experimental deployments, generating both academic outputs and commercially ready technologies. It forms a central part of Hanshow’s global R&D strategy to connect digital and physical retail through AIoT architectures that improve efficiency, transparency and sustainability.
Hanshow continues to expand its worldwide innovation network, investing in open research collaborations that transform cutting-edge engineering into solutions that help retailers compete in an increasingly data-driven marketplace.
About Hanshow
Hanshow is a global leader in developing and manufacturing electronic shelf labels and digital store solutions. The company offers customers a series of customized IoT touchpoints and digital store solutions that deliver customer-centric insights. Hanshow’s solutions have provided services to a vast number of stores in over 70 countries and regions, helping them streamline operations, optimize pricing strategies, and offer customers a more personalized experience. In addition, Hanshow delivers advanced digital energy solutions, supporting clients with intelligent in-store energy optimization and integrated PV storage charging systems to reduce energy consumption, lower carbon emissions, and accelerate their transition toward sustainable operations. Learn more: www.hanshow.com
Hanshow and the University of Cambridge Announce Strategic Research Partnership to Advance Next-Generation Augmented RFID
ROME (AP) — On a recent weeknight, long after the swarms of tourists had left Rome's Colosseum, a small group of people walked around outside the darkened amphitheater, pausing every so often to take in a new aspect of its history, art or architecture with every sense but sight.
Michela Marcato, 54, has been blind since birth. She and her partially sighted partner were touring the site amid a new effort by Italy to make its myriad artistic treasures more accessible to people with blindness or low vision and enhance how all visitors experience and perceive art.
As she listened to her tour guide, Marcato traced her fingers over a small souvenir model of the Colosseum. She felt the grooves of its archways and rugged rubble of its crumbled side. What she hadn't realized before holding it was the elliptical shape of building.
“Walking around it, I personally would never have realized it. I would never have understood it,” she said. “But with that little model in your hand, it’s obvious!”
Italy and its art-filled cities have no shortage of tourists, but they haven’t always been overly welcoming to visitors with disabilities. People who use wheelchairs often find elevators and doorways that are too narrow, stairs without ramps and uneven pavements.
But in 2021, as a condition of receiving European Union pandemic recovery funds, Italy accelerated its accessibility initiatives, dedicating more attention and resources to removing architectural barriers and making its tourist sites and sporting venues more accessible.
The ancient city of Pompeii recently installed a new system of signage to make the vast archaeological site more accessible to blind and disabled people. The project uses braille signs, QR-coded audio guides, tactile models and bas-relief replicas of artifacts that have been excavated over the years.
The city of Florence, for its part, has produced a guide on the accessibility options at the Uffizi Gallery and its other museums, with detailed information on routes and requirements — including the presence of companions — for sites such as the Boboli Gardens, which because of their historic structures are not fully accessible.
An inclusive tourism model doesn’t just honor the human rights of people with disabilities; it also makes economic sense. Nearly half of the world’s population aged over 60 has a disability, and disabled travelers tend to bring two or more companions, according to the World Tourism Organization.
Giorgio Guardi, a tour guide with the Radici Association, which has been leading tours of Rome for people with disabilities since 2015, said the aim of accessible tourism is to create an experience that is enjoyable for everyone involved, companions included.
That often means slowing down, touching what can be touched and experiencing artwork with different senses. The association often organizes walking tours at night, when there are fewer people out and less distracting ambient noise at famous landmarks.
But it isn’t always possible for blind people to touch artworks, so guides have to get creative.
Take Rome's central Campo dei Fiori piazza and its imposing statue of Giordano Bruno, the 16th-century philosopher burned at the stake during the Inquisition for alleged heresy.
The statue, which stands atop a large pedestal in the middle of the piazza, is too high for visitors to touch. On a recent nighttime tour of the piazza, Guardi encouraged his clients to instead assume Bruno’s position: Hunched over, wearing a heavy hooded cape and clasping a book with both hands.
As one of his clients assumed the position, Guardi draped the cape over him. Others in the group lined up to touch the Bruno impersonator to feel the contours of his drooped shoulders, heavy with the weight of the Inquisition. Visitors who were deaf were also part of the tour, aided by a sign-language interpreter who recounted Bruno’s tragic end.
Aldo and Daniela Grassini, both blind, were avid travelers and art collectors who grew increasingly frustrated that they weren't allowed to touch art when they visited museums around the world. In the early 1990s, they founded what subsequently become Italy's only publicly funded tactile museum, the Museo Omero in the Adriatic coastal city of Ancona, where all the art is meant to be handled.
Named for the blind poet Homer, the museum features life-sized replicas of some of Italy’s most famous artworks, from ancient Roman and Greek statues to the head of Michelangelo’s David, as well as contemporary artworks.
“Touching something isn't like looking at it," said Aldo Grassini. "Not just because of the emotion it offers, but because of the type of knowledge that sensation provides.”
Sight, he said, is an “overbearing sense that tends to monopolize reality,” whereas touch offers a different dimension.
“We love with our eyes and with our hands. If we are in love with a person or an object that is particularly dear to us, is it enough to just look at it? No, we need to caress it, because caressing gives you a different emotion,” he said.
One of the artists whose work is on display at the museum is Felice Tagliaferri, who himself is blind.
At his studio on the outskirts of Cesena, Tagliaferri points to a marble bust he sculpted of his late friend Angela. Tagliaferri recalled that before Angela died of breast cancer, he lay down in bed with her, caressing her bald head.
“When she passed away, Angela remained in my hands, and I recreated this sculpture thinking of her,” he said.
Marcato, the woman who toured the Colosseum, and her partner Massimiliano Naccarato live in a smart apartment on Rome's east side whose living room is dominated by a huge painting of the sea.
Naccarato, who can see using his cellphone to enlarge images and with the help of special lights, purchased the painting to celebrate a professional award, and it has pride of place in their home.
Naccarato installed a special light behind the work so he can see it better. Marcato can’t see it at all, but she knows it’s there. And her own experience at the beach informs the way she enjoys the painting.
For her, the painting recalls her love of the sea, “for the noise it makes, for the thousand different sounds it produces, for the smell you breathe in, for the walks you can take in any season.”
It is a sensory way of appreciating art that has absolutely nothing to do with seeing it.
Nicole Winfield contributed.
Francesca Inglese, who is blind, touches a marble relief on the corner of a building during an inclusive art tour in downtown Rome, on Nov. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Michela Marcato, left, who is blind, and her partially sighted partner Massimiliano Naccarato, stand in front of a painting representing the sea during an interview at their home in Rome, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Aldo Grassini and Daniela Bottegoni, both blind, who founded in 1993 the Omero Tactile Museum, the first publicly funded tactile museum in Italy, pose for a portrait in their home in Ancona, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Stefania Terre, left, touches a reproduction of Michelangelo's sculpture La Pieta with Carmine Laezza, standing at right, during a tour for blind people with Monica Bernacchia, center, at the Omero Tactile Museum in Ancona, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Stefania Terre, who is blind, uses a small light on her fingers while touching a life-size reproduction of the head of Michelangelo's David as she poses for a long-exposure photograph at the Omero Tactile Museum in Ancona, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
