These institutions were chosen by the former Auto-ID Center to design the architecture for the Internet of Things together with EPCglobal.

[1][2] The federation was established in 1999; the network they have developed is at the heart of a proposal sponsored by EPCglobal and supported by GS1, GS1 US, Wal-Mart, Hewlett-Packard, and others to use RFID and the Electronic Product Code (EPC) in the identification of items in the supply chain for companies.

The Auto-ID Labs is the research-oriented successor to the MIT Auto-ID Center, founded by Kevin Ashton, David Brock, Dr. Daniel Engels, Sanjay Sarma, and Sunny Siu with funding from Procter & Gamble, Gillette, the Uniform Code Council, and a number of other global consumer products manufacturers.

Auto-ID Labs is responsible for managing and funding the continued development of EPC technology.

On the autoidlabs.org website, the Auto-ID Labs continuously publish their research results and provide an archive with over 150 white papers and academic publications.