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

这一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挑战。当今供应链的复杂性使得优化微观物流流程变得困难，如质量控制、库存跟踪、重新进货、可追溯性、截止日期预测和室内运输。该项目将开发一种新颖的系统，可以以可扩展、经济高效和可靠的方式识别和定位数十亿件物品。由此产生的系统可能会在物理世界和数字世界之间架起一座桥梁，提供重要的可见性和分析，以改进流程并节省成本。这项研究的创新可能会促进人们对如何设计和构建实用、可扩展和健壮的微定位系统的科学和技术理解。该计划的主要教育成果是培养能够建立强大的、多样化的团队并通过商业化领导这些团队产生社会影响的企业家领导者。此外，该计划包括各种活动，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。该项目专注于设计和构建一个实用的、可扩展的跟踪射频识别(RFID)标签的系统。RFID是无源的、廉价的(3美分)标签，已经被许多行业作为条形码替代品部署了数千亿美元。不幸的是，现有的RFID解决方案对于高精度跟踪来说过于粗糙和不准确，特别是在高度动态和苛刻的环境中，如仓库、网点和工厂。为了应对这一挑战，提出了一种新的RFID传感器，它具有高精度(即亚厘米级)、健壮(即多路径弹性)和成本效益。新的传感器使用了一个新颖的雷达启发的RFID定位模块来测量飞行时间，并使用了一个拆分计算框架来高效和低成本地提取位置。将使用分布式传感器网络体系结构来在大范围内进行扩展。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，该解决方案可横跨供应链中的各种应用程序和用例。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.