NXP demonstrated a washing machine equipped with both RFID and NFC sensors at the Embedded World show in Nuremberg, Germany last week.

The washing machine uses RFID technology to read tags in clothes and detect what washing cycle they should go on. This allows information about the fabric type and color to be collected from RFID-tagged buttons, helping users to avoid mixing white and dark laundry and optimizing the washing program based on the characteristics it reads from both the clothing and the washing detergent used.

The NFC functionality, meanwhile, is designed to speed up and improve maintenance should a problem occur. NFC is used to allow technicians to perform diagnostics on the smart washing machine on site, change its status, upgrade firmware and launch an app on an NFC phone that communicates directly with the manufacturer’s service center using the phone’s data connection.

NXP has produced a video of the smart washing machine in use:

“Major home appliances are becoming ‘smarter’ by the day — yet we’ve only started to explore the universe of possibilities when it comes to two-way communication,” says Jan Willem Vogel, senior director of industrial applications marketing at NXP.

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