Wireless Asset Tracking and Management System for Depot Shops

We propose a system architecture that easily integrates any physical tracking solution with a software framework that provides a suite of supervisory components for assigning, tracking, monitoring, and scheduling assets for any given work environment. For any given working environment, different hardware tracking solutions, different hardware infrastructure, and different communication networks may be needed, and interface to existing management software packages may be required. Based on IAI's multi-agent software infrastructure, the proposed system will allow for this flexibility in hardware and support the integration of these varying systems with plug and playable components. In Phase I, we have developed prototype software to prove the concept in simulation. The system can track equipment and workers with active tags. The active tags on equipment can interrogate passive tags attached to every tool associated with the equipment. All works, equipment, and tools are associated with tasks as well. During Phase II, we will implement a fully functional version of the complete system and demonstrate it in a DOD depot or similar environment. We also proposed a specific hardware solution suitable for DOD depot. This particular scheme uses Ultra Wideband radios to track locations of active tags and uses RFIDs as the passive tags.