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High Accuracy Indoor Location Tracking?

Posted by Cliff on from the where-did-it-go dept.

aletterman asks: "I am looking for technology that can allow my company to track the position of a fork lift as it moves around a warehouse. This would allow us to factor out one problem situation - where the lift was when the driver dropped off the product. Based on the width of our warehouse locations, we need a resolution of about +-1ft. Standard GPS can't get that accurate or work well indoors. The fork lifts already have a VT220 terminal running 802.11b, so adding another device would not be difficult. I am currently looking at a product that can triangulate via the RSSI of the 802.11b network, but I am concerned the changes in the product mix and density of the corrugated boxes will change the RSSI and introduce a mis-positioning of the locations. I would prefer that the device transmit a position either serially or via our 802.11b network. Our warehouses are fairly large (300,000+ sqft) and have a large of amount of corrugated boxes. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!"

4 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. RFID by Yonder+Way · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Embed RFID tags in the floor. Put an RFID reader underneath the forklift. Have it report back over 802.11b with the RFID tag number(s) that it is closest to.

    1. Re:RFID by T-Ranger · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Thats what I was thinking.. Does the poster have to be within +/- 1', everywhere, or are there specific points of interest? If the later, just tag the points of interest.

  2. low tech by Sevn · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Put cameras on the ceiling and paint big orange numbers on top of the forklifts.

    --
    For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
  3. Re:First part of any successfull solution by p7 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You are making alot of assumptions yourself. You assume that he doesn't know what is on the forklift. For all we know every item can be identified by the forklift automatically. They may be using a system like you describe. People can make mistakes and drop off an item in the wrong storage space, so they want this system to automatically verify that the driver was at the right storage container when he dropped off the item.

    You may be right, but you go to far in assuming that he didn't provide enough info.

    A few safe assumptions would be...

    The warehouse has some system to figure out where an item is.

    The problem he is trying to solve is misplaced items.

    He has some way of telling when a box is dropped of whether it be automatically or driver triggered.

    With that in mind, the current answers are not so far off.