Apr 08, 2013When specialized furniture for disabled students is assigned a classroom location at Oregon State University, a real-time location system (RTLS) lets the school's Disability Access Services (DAS) department automatically know where those items are located, and when they have been moved. The DAS department is utilizing an RTLS solution provided by AeroScout Industrial (a division of Stanley Black and Decker), to track 480 pieces of furniture throughout 130 classrooms and 40 buildings within the school's 1,800-acre campus in Corvallis, Ore. Now, other departments at the university are considering using the technology as well, in order to track specialized master keys for dormitory rooms and monitor temperature changes in the cafeterias.
The DAS provides furniture such as specialized SurfaceWorks tables and lumbar-support chairs for all students who require them, as well as chairs for individuals who serve as interpreters and transcribers for hearing-impaired students. During the past few years, says Jennifer Gossett, the school's DAS coordinator, the university has noticed an increase in the number of disabled students, as veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan enroll in classes at the school. The DAS department provides the necessary furniture to those students, in the classrooms corresponding to their class schedules. Tracking the furniture and ensuring that each piece is where it should be for a specific student and class, however, had been a difficult task. The university did not want to bolt furniture to the floor, but on the other hand, because the furniture was mobile, locating it was often a time-consuming task, even if it was merely moved to another classroom within the same building. Consequently, some students did not receive the items they required at the time of the class.
If the DAS department received a call from a student reporting that a chair or table was not where it was needed as a class began, a staff member would have to hike out to that building and start physically searching for the missing furniture. In some cases, this could be up to a half-mile away. In fact, when the school purchased 480 new items in 2011, employees had joked that they would need a GPS unit on each piece of furniture to ensure that it did not end up missing. According to the university, personnel found that they could use the school's existing Wi-Fi network to locate the items, not with GPS but via AeroScout's Wi-Fi-enabled tags.
The solution consists of AeroScout MobileView software operating on the school's back-end system, as well as an AeroScout Wi-Fi T2 tag attached to each piece of furniture. A graphical map of every building on the MobileView software can display each item's location with a varying degree of granularity, based on the quantity of Wi-Fi access points within that building. In some cases, an item can be located within a classroom, while in others, the DAS department can view where the assets are, specific to a floor or a particular part of a floor in that building.
The DAS staff attached the T2 tags to each of the 480 items. At the time, workers discussed whether to hide the tags or make them visible, by placing them where users could easily see them. Ultimately, Gossett says, they opted to make the tags visible, and that visibility also acts as a deterrent to those who might want to move an item.
Once the goods were tagged, each item's assigned location—such as a classroom number (based on the course scheduling of the disabled students)—was input into the MobileView software and was linked to its tag's unique ID number.
After a piece of tagged furniture was delivered to its assigned classroom, its tag began transmitting to the access points, and updating that asset's location status in the software. Every Monday, the DAS department now views a report in the software indicating where each item should be, as well as whether there are any discrepancies.
If students arrive at classes and find that their furniture is missing, they can call the DAS department. A DAS employee can then sign onto the MobileView software, identify the items' locations and dispatch an individual to collect those pieces of furniture and move them to where they are required. However, Gossett notes, since the Wi-Fi-based system's installation, this does not occur often.
In the event that an item is removed from a building, the system will no longer receive a transmission from that tag, and the software will send Gossett an e-mail indicating a problem. Although there is no Wi-Fi network outdoors, she says, as an asset moves throughout the campus, it may pass buildings with Wi-Fi access points, which will then provide a location update, enabling Gossett to know in which direction that asset is moving. If the school had required a greater level of security, she adds, it could have requested that AeroScout install exciters at the door that would enable an alert to be received at the instant that the item reached a doorway. However, she notes, OSU did not have the budget for that level of security—or the need, since few items are actually stolen from the campus.
Although Gossett is unable to measure the gains resulting from the use of the RTLS solution in terms of fewer labor hours or reduced cost of replacing missing items, she says she currently knows the on-campus locations of all 480 items, whereas prior to the system's deployment, she could locate only 25 percent of specialized furniture. Gossett says she is now sharing her experiences using the technology with other school departments. The university is considering using the solution to identify the locations of master key sets for dorm rooms, as well as monitor temperatures within cafeterias via AeroScout temperature sensor tags.
AeroScout's challenge was to provide an RTLS solution for Oregon State University at minimal cost, while not involving the school's IT department. OSU did not wish to install additional access points, or to calibrate the Wi-Fi network, according to Pat Gilbert, AeroScout Industrial's product marketing director, who notes that AeroScout's RTLS solutions are typically calibrated to ensure even coverage. However, the system is providing the school with strong coverage within all of its buildings. If OSU opts to deploy T2 tags in order to track key sets or other assets, or sensor tags to monitor temperatures, that addition "should be pretty straightforward to add," Gilbert states.
