May 22, 2012A European wheel manufacturer is providing RFID-enabled wheels to one of its customers, a maker of trolleys (rolling carts used to transport goods or equipment), following a 16-month trial of the technology. The solution was jointly developed by two German companies: pureSpekt, which designed the passive EPC Gen 2 ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID tags embedded in the wheels, and noFilis, which supplied its CrossTalk software for use during the trial.
The wheel manufacturer and its customer both asked to remain unnamed.
PureSpekt developed an EPC Gen 2 passive inlay made with Impinj's Monza 4 RFID chip, which the company converted into a high-temperature tag and embedded into a hard tag. The wheel manufacturer, in turn, incorporates the hard tags into wheels. The RFID-enabled wheels were attached to trolleys at the trolley maker's factory, using four RFID-enabled wheels on each cart. NoFilis installed fixed readers and antennas to the wall, at an angle facing the floor, in order to capture ID numbers as tags rolled by embedded in the wheels. The trolley company intends to provide RFID-enabled carts to its customers, while the wheel manufacturer plans to market the RFID solution to other trolley makers, as well as to companies that produce other wheeled products.
The solution was developed for use by businesses that wish to track the locations of their trolleys—as well as, in some cases, the products loaded onto them. By providing RFID tags in the wheels, the company ensures that users need not apply RFID tags to their trolleys, or to other wheeled items. Instead, the tag is embedded in each wheel in such a way that it cannot be seen, or be knocked loose of the wheel.
When tracking products, for example, plant and flower distributors could link each plant in their database with a specific trolley, and thereby monitor where they are located within a facility, based on reads of the RFID-enabled wheels as the trolleys pass fixed interrogators mounted at such locations as loading docks, or in storage areas. The wheels have many other use cases as well, however. For instance, they could be used to locate shopping carts at store locations, or to identify where hospital beds are located within a health-care facility. In addition, the RFID-enabled wheels could be utilized on food or beverage carts.
PureSpekt and NoFilis designed the solution, says Charlie Purser, pureSpekt's CEO, to fill what it perceived as a market gap with regard to small form-factor RFID tags offering a long read range. He says the company worked closely with noFilis' CEO, Franz Angerer.
The initial challenge for pureSpekt, Purser says, was to design the inlays to fit the wheel. The resulting tags are shaped to accomplish this goal, and can sustain the high temperatures to which the tags may be exposed—for example, during a cleaning process. Although all four of a trolley's wheels were tagged for the trial, Purser says, just one or two tagged wheels would be required on most trolleys, such as postal, shipping or shopping carts.
During the trial, NoFilis' CrossTalk software was utilized to record and interpret RFID data, which would then be managed on the user's own software-management system. One of the software modules captures the read data, filters that information and interprets the tag's unique ID number, while another stores that data, indicating when the tag was read, in which direction it was moved and to what location, based on the reader's ID. According to Purser, CrossTalk's patented "false-positive-read" filtering functionality, known as Sense-Gate Solution, provides reliability within bulk-reading environments.
The tags were read from a distance of 10 feet to 16 feet (3 meters to 5 meters), Purser reports. "We were flabbergasted," he says, because the read range was so long in an environment containing a great deal of metal. Situating the tags close to the floor, he notes, extended read range.
Customers of the technology, the company predicts, will include trolley manufacturers themselves, which may need to manage their own fleet, as well as buyers of trolleys in the health-care, logistics, manufacturing and retail markets. The RFID-enabled wheels will cost more than those not RFID-enabled. Purser estimates, however, that the RFID versions will cost less than other hard tags currently in use for tracking rolling carts.
Users can arrange for noFilis to provide the necessary software and integration services, or can employ their own provider, along with any UHF RFID readers.
