How MIT Researchers Use Drone Fleets to Track Warehouse Inventory

What should you know about MIT Researchers‘ use of Drones?

Many companies are becoming aware of the need to automate warehouse inventory tracking in their businesses. The tracking of warehouse stock inventories is one of the major challenges that every business faces including the best-run enterprises. Reports indicate that business makes losses totaling to more than $45 billion due to losses resulting from lost items. The MIT Researchers seeks to ensure that business can cut down their losses related to lost items through the incorporation of drone technology in tracking inventories. MIT Researchers are optimistic that the use of drone fleets could be the solution for businesses having challenges in tracking their warehouse inventories.

What are the advantages of incorporating drones in tracking warehouse inventories?

It makes the location of stock in the warehouse inventories easy. The drones have the capacity to fly around without any security concern and read the RFID tags on warehouse inventories from a distance with a margin error of about 19 cm according to the report by MIT Researchers. The discoveries by the MIT Researchers indicate that the incorporation of drones in the management of warehouses will make it easy to locate the location of items. The MIT Researchers believe that the use of drones in monitoring warehouse stock will inhibit cases of mismatch and help warehouse inventories attendants sort items quickly and easily.

It cuts down operational costs. Operational costs are a big deal for many businesses and steps are taken to minimize them. Businesses that are making losses due to lost items that do not reflect in their stock inventories can adopt the use of drones in monitoring warehouse inventories. MIT Researchers have developed drones that are able to read the RFID tags, tag readers on stock, and keep you updated on the location and state of your stock. This will ensure that cases of lost items will be outdated for many businesses that make huge losses due to lost warehouse stocks.

It is compatible with existing RFID tags, tag readers, and software. Businesses can adopt print apply labelers that are compatible with barcodes and images on items stored in warehouses. MIT Researchers have successfully developed a method that allows them to use the drone as the relaying channel. This technology allows business to adopt the use of drones in tracking warehouse stock inventories without adopting new RFID tags, software and tag readers.

The drones cannot carry antenna arrays, as they are too small. Traditional location detection systems relied on antenna arrays to decode RFID signals and locate their origin. The problem with using the antenna array technology in drones is that they are very small and cannot carry them. The MIT Research solves this issue by ensuring that signal readings taken at different locations can correlate and then use the antenna arrays to decode it.

What are the limitations of the use of drones in tracking warehouse inventory?

Problems in determining the precise location of items, or warehouse inventory. The MIT Researchers realized that when determining the precise location of an item by the relaying of RFID signals interferes with signal processing. RFID tags involve two transmissions, one from the reader and another from the tag itself. Using the drone-mounted relays increases the number of transmissions involved to four and this interferes with the transmission of the location signals.

The precise location of the drone affects the signal quality. Drones are in constant motion hence the signals from the RFID tags reaching the reader will depend on their location. The location sent to the business owner does not account for the drone’s movement leading to an error on the final reading on item location.

The MIT Researcher’s discovery on the application of drone fleets to track warehouse inventories is a timely innovation that is likely to revolutionize inventory tracking.