Positioning of packaged goods by tracking passive RFID tags

Nowadays, industrial and commercial applications often require systems that can track the position of products, animals and people. There exist diverse positioning systems and techniques, which can however only offer a solution to a limited number of applications, mainly due to the diverse challenges that each application poses. This work provides a solution to detecting the position of packaged goods, for enhancing the level of automation of modern warehousing systems. The herein presented solution is based on commercial passive RFID tags that are commonly fixed on the packaging for product identification. Within this framework, different tracking systems were developed, one for the HF and one for the UHF band repsectively. The HF system employ an array of commercial reader antennas to detect the position of the tags within the material flow. The UHF system comprises a novel electronically-steered antenna array to determine the angular position of the tags. The achieved accuracy for both systems meets the requirements of the examined application. The presented systems can assist an industrial manipulator in carrying out a fully automated handling process of the products. Such systems can moreover be employed by mobile robots for navigational purposes and mapping.