PFI-TT: Bridging the Information Gap in Supply Chain using Internet of Things (IoT)

创新技术转化伙伴关系（PFI-TT）项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是解决供应链物流面临的数十亿美元的挑战。当今供应链的复杂性使其难以优化微观物流流程，如质量控制，库存跟踪，重新进货，可追溯性，最后期限预测和室内运输。该项目将开发一种新的系统，可以以可扩展、具有成本效益和可靠的方式识别和定位数十亿件物品。由此产生的系统可以将物理世界与数字世界联系起来，提供重要的可见性和分析，以改善流程并节省成本。这项研究的创新可能会促进科学和技术的理解，如何设计和建立实用的，可扩展的，强大的微定位系统。该计划的主要教育成果是培养能够建立强大，多样化团队的创业领袖，并通过商业化领导这些团队走向社会影响。此外，该计划还包括各种活动，以确保来自代表性不足的人口的学生和研究人员的广泛参与。该项目的重点是设计和构建一个实用的，可扩展的系统，用于跟踪射频识别（RFID）标签。RFID是被动的，廉价的（3美分）标签，已经被许多行业部署了数千亿个条形码替代品。不幸的是，现有的RFID解决方案对于高精度跟踪来说太粗糙和不准确，特别是在仓库，商店和工厂等高度动态和恶劣的环境中。为了解决这一挑战，提出了一种新的RFID传感器，其高度精确（即，亚厘米），坚固（即，多径弹性）和成本有效。新的传感器使用一种新颖的雷达启发的RFID定位模块进行飞行时间测量，并使用一个分裂计算框架进行高效和低成本的位置提取。分布式传感器网络架构将用于跨大面积扩展。该项目的主要目标是提供一个易于部署和可扩展的解决方案，该解决方案在供应链中的各种应用和用例中是横向的。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is to address multi-billion dollar challenges facing supply chain logistics. The complexity of today’s supply chains makes it difficult to optimize micro-logistics processes such as quality control, inventory tracking, re-stocking, traceability, deadline projections, and indoor transport. This project will develop a novel system that can identify and locate billions of items in a scalable, cost-effective, and reliable manner. The resulting system may bridge the physical with the digital world, providing significant visibility and analytics to improve processes and save costs. The innovations in this research may advance scientific and technological understanding of how to design and build practical, scalable, and robust micro-location systems. The primary educational outcome of this program is to train entrepreneurial leaders that are capable of building strong, diverse teams and leading these teams toward societal impact through commercialization. Furthermore, the program includes various activities to ensure broad participation of students and researchers from under-represented demographics.This project focuses on designing and building a practical, scalable system for tracking Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. RFIDs are passive, inexpensive (3-cent) tags that have already been deployed in the hundreds of billions as barcode replacements by many industries. Unfortunately, existing RFID solutions are too coarse and inaccurate for high-precision tracking, especially in highly dynamic and harsh environments such as warehouses, outlets, and factories. To address this challenge, a new RFID sensor is proposed that is highly accurate (i.e., sub-centimeter), robust (i.e., multipath resilient), and cost-effective. The new sensor uses a novel radar-inspired RFID positioning module for time-of-flight measurement and a split-computing framework for efficient and low-cost location extraction. A distributed sensor network architecture will be used to scale across large areas. The main goal of this project is to provide an easy to deploy and scalable solution that is horizontal across various applications and use cases in the supply chain.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.