A New Vision for Smart Objects and the Internet of Things: Mobile Robots and Long-Range UHF RFID Sensor Tags
This addresses the need for scalable, embodied intelligence in IoT applications, though it appears incremental by combining existing mobile robots and RFID sensor tags.
The paper tackles the problem of enabling smart objects and the Internet of Things by proposing a system where mobile robots interact with long-range UHF RFID sensor tags for tasks like soil moisture sensing and infrastructure monitoring, demonstrating applications in agriculture and environmental monitoring.
We present a new vision for smart objects and the Internet of Things wherein mobile robots interact with wirelessly-powered, long-range, ultra-high frequency radio frequency identification (UHF RFID) tags outfitted with sensing capabilities. We explore the technology innovations driving this vision by examining recently-commercialized sensor tags that could be affixed-to or embedded-in objects or the environment to yield true embodied intelligence. Using a pair of autonomous mobile robots outfitted with UHF RFID readers, we explore several potential applications where mobile robots interact with sensor tags to perform tasks such as: soil moisture sensing, remote crop monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, water quality monitoring, and remote sensor deployment.