Industry 4.0: Asset Track and Trace

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When considering an asset track and trace IoT application in a factory or warehouse, many think of the well-established Barcode or QR code. Although this technology is firmly embedded into modern society as a reliable, low cost and easy to understand pillar for tracking and tracing assets, many companies were quick to adopt the technology as an easy way of minimising human errors and increasing process efficiency.

However, when managing the location of thousands of assets, this simple system is somewhat limited in the overview that it can provide an ERP (enterprise requirements system) system. A significant aspect of Industry 4.0 is process transparency, providing the ERP and BI (business intelligence) systems with the most update-to-date information, allowing management to identify bottlenecks and potential areas of weakness.

Until several years ago, asset tracking was strengthened by combining RFID tags with GPS (global positioning system) technology. Although this was certainly a step in the right direction, the implementation costs were high and technology suffered from RF interference, short range and moderate location accuracy. GPS also had the big disadvantage of only being able to work outdoors and has a location accuracy of several metres – not really suitable!

Industry 4.0 real time location systems (RTLS)

Over the years, different technology has appeared as solution to providing real-time assets location information to the ERP system. As mentioned above, technologies, such as RFIDs, bar codes and GPS have certainly been a step in the right direction, but didn’t fully meet the requirements of modern businesses look to optimise their processes.

Ultrawide band (UWB) radar

With advances in radar technology over the last few years, a few silicon vendors are now producing affordable UWB radar devices suitable for trace and trace applications. Radar technology that used to cost thousands of Euros, and was primarily aimed a military technology, is now available for tens of Euros, making it viable candidate for track and trace applications.

UWB highlights

  • Ten times more accurate than GPS, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth with typical accuracies a good as 10cm.
  • Hundreds of metres range with data communication options.
  • Very low power and safe for humans – power emission typically a fraction of percent of a typical Wi-Fi router.
  • Licence free ISM band, meaning no complicated ETSI/FCC certification and lower implementation costs.
  • Penetrates walls and doors, making it ideal for warehouses and buildings.

Contemporary UWB based solutions finally allow for a true RTLS implementation, giving enterprises control over their personnel and assets. Whether tracking containers through a supply chain, optimising manufacturing processes, or providing asset traceability, an RTLS-UWB system provides an ERP system with real-time situation awareness that can be acted upon instantly.

Benefits for your enterprise

  • Inventory accuracy: achieve 99.9% inventory accuracy without the need for meticulous manual audits that can take hours or even days. An RTLS-UWB system provides you with all of your asset location information in real-time.
  • Live situation update: feed the ERP and BI systems with an accurate real-time picture of asset location and personnel trends.
  • Personnel safety: attaching tags to your employees helps track process efficiency and may also be used to alert personnel about entering dangerous areas. The tag locations are also invaluable in case of an emergency, such as fire, as the location of all personnel is known at all times.
  • e-paper and sensors: modern tags use e-paper technology to only display the most up-to-date information (e.g. QR code, sensor readings). Extra sensor information, such as temperature, humidity and vibration provide a simple way of establishing anti-tampering and asset health.

Advanced Solutions Nederland (ASN) BV is an international market leader in innovative IoT smart sensor and track and trace RTLS-UWB technological solutions.

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How drones fuel ‘smart air’: The eye in the sky

Besides delivery, drones are already used as an ‘eye in the sky’. Or, with a ultrawide band radar attached to the drone, you can fly the drone wherever you want, maybe land the drone and start measuring. For instance:

  • It helps farmer to get higher yields by giving them a literal overview which spots on their field are developing well and which spots are perfoming less. So that farmers can take action on the lower performing spots.
  • Drones have excellent use for finding spots for roads, waterworks, energy fields and other infrastructure.
  • Drones give a real-time situation overview. As an example: an overview of road congestion to aid the city council to take proper action
  • They can measure while covering large areas. For instance: a large crop field where only the first crops from the road are visible for a farmer. Furthermore, they have the advantage that big areas can be captured in one glance
  • At places where humans have difficulty or is dangerous to reach. Think about places in the jungle or large mountainous regions. But also: an aid in building and maintenance of buildings and constructions like large building sites, bridges and high towers. Or when action on dangerous gasses is needed. And maybe, drones can become an aid to perform reparations and make installations themselves
  • For better and worse, drones can also be used for guarding assets. With sensors, they can guard areas by looking for movement, and establish a protected zone. Unfortunately, the technology is also available for terrorists, who will also find a use for drones for maximising chaos

Privacy, Safety and Security

Especially in crowded areas, privacy is a big issuse. A big complaint is the noise that drones produce: in a 2017 study, NASA found out that people find the noise of drones more annoying than the sound of ‘normal’ traffic. Besides noise, privacy has another factor: the camera. Besides that, drones may fly unasked over your property, what do they register exactly? What if you don’t want to be filmed in your garden?

Another practical problem is the risk that a drone can drop its cargo. Or that it can fall out of air itself. Amazon is already experimenting with a self-destroying drone when the drone risks crashing. In crowded areas, the risk of damage or even worse: hitting someone can’t be overlooked.

For acceptance of the use of drones, these challenges have to be resolved for getting trust and acceptance. Legislation is expected to come in to regulate drone traffic.

Security

As anyone can and will buy a drone, security is another issue. Anyone can just buy one online or even in a toystore and fly with it anywhere they want. The annoying noise of a drone in natural parks might be a inconvenience. But of course, more harmful use of drones might take place as well, for instance when used by terrorists, who can use drones for unwanted inspection and creating chaos. But also: you can load anything on your drone, fly to your destination and place it into action. Governments can forbid the flying of drones in the proximity of (for instance) a nuclear powerplant, but how do you prevent someone actually flying it there? Where a lot of questions of drone-flying have some potential answers, this one is still unsolved.

In all cases, sensors play a pivotal role in solving the technical questions. ASN Filter Designer can help with sensor measurement with real-time feedback and the powerful signal analyzer. How? Look at ASN Filter Designer or mail our consultancy service at: designs@advsolned.com

Do you agree with this list? Do you have other suggestions? Please let us know!

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How drones fuel ‘smart air’: Delivery drones

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Where ‘smart traffic’ has already 417 billion hits on google, I only found ‘smart air’ for a kind of door lock and ‘smart drone’ for an advanced toy drone. But definitely, drones are so hot that they will become part of something called ‘smart air’. The SESAR project predicts that drones will make 250 billion hours of flight in the European Union alone. For comparison: this is far more than the air traffic of ‘normal’ airplanes today.

Because drones are using many sensors, we did some research how the use of drones can grow to maturity and fuel ‘smart air’. Today we talk about challenges for delivery drones.

Delivery drones

No wonder, drones have proven to be very convenient already and have even more promises in store. Soon, it will be commonplace that drones are delivering packages, from hot pizzas to even more urgent medicines. And even humans: the first drone taxis are already being tested. At this moment, drones are already used for drag-and-drop deliveries in some rural and faraway areas. Most articles on the internet talk about the use in drones in big city areas. And there they have the big advantage of an -still- almost empty sky instead of congested roads and overfull parking places. For that, delivery by drones will be faster and more predictable.

But until use of drones are entirely tried and tested, most drone developments will take place on rural environments. Because here the risk of large damage is a lot smaller when something will go wrong. In time, delivery drones will still be used in rural places. Maybe as a standalone, maybe in combination with self-driving trucks. Reach will not be a big problem, since the whole word is getting connected fast. So, reach will almost only depend on battery endurance. And for now, these batteries have only a limited capacity for distance and cargo.

Challenges while travelling

Like all delivery services, drone delivery has to a pick-up a package, travel to the destination and drop-of the package.  While travelling, drones have to know how to reach their destination. Meanwhile, there are some challenges:

  • Risk of colliding, with other drones, birds and other air users. Just like other traffic
  • And at point in time, some traffic rules have to be set in place. Sensors can help to let the drone follow these rules
  • How drones can stay on course, even with wind
  • Preventing drones to cross over forbidden (known) areas and unexpected ‘wrong’ areas (e.g. a building or a wood on fire)
  • How to prevent a package from falling? How to alert that a package will probably fall? Or maybe the drone itself? If so, measurement can be taken. Already, there are experiments with self-destruction. But maybe more practical solutions can be found to let the drone aim for a ‘safe area’, such as a park, river, etc. for an ‘emergency landing’
  • Acceptance of drones beside safety: how to guarentee privacy when drones are flying over peopled areas? Then there is the issue of noise: research shows that people find the noise of drones one of the most annoying forms of noise

Challenges with dropping the cargo

For now, the drop-of is literally done by dropping-of the cargo. Maybe with the aid of a cord which places the package as soft as possible to the ground. But anyhow: the drone stays in the air. So, technology has to get safe: for the package to be delivered undamaged. How does the drone know that the right person gets the package? And we have to prevent dogs from biting the package. And of course, to prevent that the dropped cargo will harm humans, animals or buildings or even worse.

The use of sensors

The application possibilities of drones are very promising for delivery uses. It is still in its experimental phase. But with developments going fast, soon it will reach the maturity phase. For this, there are two-fold kind of challenges.

Some are challenges on privacy, safety and security. These challenges have to be solved before the use of drones will get widespread trust and acceptance. The other are technical and communication issues: where multiple drones are being used – especially in cities- challenges how drones can and have to behave in traffic has to be solved.

In both challenges, sensors play a pivotal role in solving the technical questions. In all cases, ASN Filter Designer can help with sensor measurement with real-time feedback and the powerful signal analyzer. How? Look at ASN Filter Designer or mail ASN consultancy: designs@advsolned.com

Do you agree with this list? Do you have other suggestions? Please let us know!

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How to measure preventative maintenance

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Typical challenges faced by assets managers include:

  • How to measure mechanical component fatigue?
  • How to assess electrical wiring health?
  • How to reduce overall operating costs, but not comprise on public safety?
  • Risks posed by hackers & terrorists
  • Asset damage due to vandalism

Preventative Maintenance aims to solve the aforementioned problems by acting pre-emptively. This is achieved by constantly monitoring the performance of critical components (usually with sensors) and then alerting the maintenance team that a component is about to fail. The asset management team can then schedule maintenance in order to replace the failing component(s) with minimum disruption to the public, and overall lower operational costs.

  • Plan maintenance
  • Machine health care
  • Motor health care
  • Secure firmware updates and anti-tampering

Plan maintenance

Monitoring the health of critical component, such as a lamp, motor or machine component and input power supply. Our algorithms and analytics help asset management departments provide planned maintenance.

A better maintenance program is achieved by constantly monitoring the performance of critical components (usually with sensors or other devices) and then alerting the maintenance team that a component is about to fail.

Machine health care

The health of a machine can be determined by ‘listening’ to the sound it makes via microphones. Algorithms filter and compare recorded audio to fingerprint templates of known failures.

Motor health care

The health of an industrial motor be determined by analysis the phase currents. Algorithms filter and compare captured data to fingerprints templates of known failures. The phase current data can also be used to check for wire breaks or phase failure.

Secure firmware updates & Anti-tampering

ASN’s security module provides asset protection up to military grade, and while at the same time allowing for secure (encrypted) firmware updates.

ASN contactless measurement, smart algorithms and alerting offers the ideal condition for this programme. The asset management team can then schedule maintenance in order to replace the failing component(s) with minimum disruption to the public, and overall lower operational costs.

Let’s make an appointment to see how can help you create an effective maintenance programme and reduce your Total Cost of Ownership.

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Keeping the employee satisfied: coffee drinks dispenser case

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A leading coffee manufacturer wanted to add a function to their coffee machines that could fill every kind of mug (small, large, glass, ceramic) fully or half-fully. The requirement was that system must be able to automatically find the dimensions of the mug and track the filling process in real-time without human intervention.

A lot of time is wasted due to coffee spills due to overfilled coffee mugs, but the challenge was to see if this could be done for a reasonably low cost – around 10 EUR.

As no other coffee machine manufacturer had a flexible solution for their coffee machines, this would give them a competitive advantage as well as add a exciting new gadget to their product portfolio.

Find out how we solved this challenge here: coffee drinks dispenser case

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How sensor measurement can improve the performance of drones

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Until now, the professional use of drones is mostly still in an experimenting stage. However, drones are one of the golden nuggets in IoT because they can play a pivotal role, for instance in congested cities and faraway areas for delivery. Further, they can be a great help to give an overview of a large area or for places which are difficult or dangerous to reach.

In one of our previous blogs, we concluded that sensor measurement has mostly been a case of trial and error. In this blog, we list some of the challenges we see for sensor measurement which has to be solved to bring the professional use of drones to full maturity.

Practical challenges which can and must be solved with sensors

Here are some of the challenges we have found:

  • Risk of colliding, with other drones, birds and other air users. Just like other traffic
  • And at point in time, some traffic rules have to be set in place. Sensors can help to let the drone follow these rules
  • How drones can stay on course, even with wind
  • Preventing drones to cross over forbidden (known) areas and unexpected ‘wrong’ areas (e.g. a building or a wood on fire)
  • Challenges with unloading the package:
    • Without damage
    • Without harming people, animals, buildings
    • How the drone will know that the right person gets the package? Can we prevent dogs from biting the package?
  • How to prevent a package from falling? How to alert that a package will probably fall? Or maybe the drone itself? If so, measurement can be taken. Already, there are experiments with self-destruction. But maybe more practical solutions can be found to let the drone aim for a ‘safe area’, such as a park, river, etc. for an ‘emergency landing’.

In all cases, ASN Filter Designer can help with sensor measurement with real-time feedback and the powerful signal analyser? How? Look at ASN Filter Designer or mail us: info@advsolned.com

Do you agree with this list? Do you have other suggestions? Please let us know!

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ASN Filter Designer supports all Arm Cortex-M demo-boards

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Did you know that there are 23 billion IoT embedded devices currently deployed around the world? This figure is expected to grow to a whopping 1 trillion devices by 2050!

Less known, is that 80% of IoT devices are based around Arm’s Cortex-M microcontroller technology. Sometimes clients ask us if we support their Arm Cortex-M based demo-board of choice. The answer is simply: yes!

200+ IC vendors supported

The ASN Filter Designer has an automatic code generator for Arm Cortex-M cores, which means that we support virtually every Arm based demo-board: ST, Cypress, NXP, Analog Devices, TI, Microchip/Atmel and over 200+ other manufacturers. Our compatibility with Arm’s free CMSIS-DSP software framework removes the frustration of implementing complicated digital filters in your IoT application – leaving you with code that is optimal for Cortex-M devices and that works 100% of the time.

The Arm Cortex-M family of microcontrollers are an excellent match for IoT applications. Some of the advantages include:

  • Low power and cost – essential for IoT devices
  • Microcontroller with DSP functionality all-in-one
  • Embedded hardware security functionality
  • Cortex-M4 and M7 cores with hardware floating support (enhanced microcontrollers)
  • Freely available CMSIS-DSP C library: supporting over 60 signal processing functions

Automatic code generation for Arm’s CMSIS-DSP software framework

Simply load your sensor data into the ASN Filter Designer signal analyser and perform a detailed analysis. After identifying the wanted and unwanted components of your signal, design a filter and test the performance in real-time on your test data. Export the designed design to Arm MDK, C/C++ or integrate the filter into your algorithm in another domain, such as in Matlab, Python, Scilab or Labview.

Use the tool in your RAD (rapid application development) process, by taking advantage of the automatic code generation to Arm’s CMSIS-DSP software framework, and quickly integrate the DSP filter code into your main application code.

Let the tool analyse your design, and automatically generate fully compliant code for either the M0, M0+, M3, M4 and the newer M23 and M33 Cortex cores. Deploy your design within minutes rather than hours.

Proud Arm knowledge partner

We are proud that we are an Arm knowledge partner! As an Arm DSP knowledge partner, we will be kept informed of their product roadmap and progress for the coming years.

Try it for yourself and see the benefits that the ASN Filter Designer can offer your organisation by cutting your development costs by up to 75%!

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ASP vs DSP – which one do I choose for my IoT application?

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How to choose between analog signal processing (ASP) and digital signal processing (DSP). How too chose for ASP or DSP; analog filters or digital filters?

Read more
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Drones and DC motor control

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Drones and DC motor control – How the ASN Filter Designer can save you a lot of time and effort

Drones are one of the golden nuggets in IoT. No wonder, they can play a pivotal role in congested cities and far away areas for delivery. Further, they can be a great help to give an overview of a large area or places which are difficult or dangerous to reach. However, most of the technology is still in its experimental stage.

Because drones have a lot of sensors, Advanced Solutions Nederland did some research on how drone producing companies have solved questions regarding their sensor technology, especially regarding DC motor control.

Until now: solutions developed with great difficulty

We found out that most producers spend weeks or even months on finding solutions for their sensor technology challenges. With the ASN Filter Designer, he/she could have come to a solution within days or maybe even hours. Besides, we expect that the measurement would be better too.

The biggest time coster is that until now algorithms were developed by handwork, i.e. they were developed in a lab environment and then tested in real-life. With the result of the test, the algorithm would be tweaked again until the desired results were reached. However, yet another challenge stems from the fact that a lab environment is where testing conditions are stable, so it’s very hard to make models work in real life. These steps result in rounds and rounds of ‘lab development’ and ‘real life testing’ in order to make any progress -which isn’t ideal!

How the ASN Filter Designer can help save a lot of time and effort

The ASN Filter Designer can help a lot of time in the design and testing of algorithms in the following ways:

  • Design, analyse and implement filters for drone sensor applications with real-time feedback and our powerful signal analyser.
  • Design filters for speed and positioning control for sensorless BLDC (brushless DC) motor applications.
  • Speed up deployment to Arm Cortex-M embedded processors.

 

Real-time feedback and powerful signal analyser

One of the key benefits of the ASN Filter Designer and signal analyser is that it gives real-time feedback. Once an algorithm is developed, it can easily be tested on real-life data. To analyse the real-life data, the ASN Filter Designer has a powerful signal analyser in place.

Design and analyse filters the easy way

You can easily design, analyse and implement filters for a variety of drone sensor applications, including: loadcells, strain gauges, torque, pressure, temperature, vibration, and ultrasonic sensors and assess their dynamic performance in real-time for a variety of input conditions.  With the ASN Filter Designer, you don’t have do to any coding yourself or break your head with specifications: you just have to draw the filter magnitude specification and the tool will calculate the coefficients itself.

Speed up deployment

Perform detailed time/frequency analysis on captured test datasets and fine-tune your design. Our Arm CMSIS-DSP and C/C++ code generators and software frameworks speed up deployment to a DSP, FPGA or micro-controller.

An example: designing BLDC motor control algorithms

BLDC (brushless DC) BLDC motors have found use in a variety of application areas, including: robotics, drones and cars. They have significant advantages over brushed DC motors and induction motors, such as: better speed-torque characteristics, high reliability, longer operating life, noiseless operation, and reduction of electromagnetic interference (EMI).

One advantage of BLDC motor control compared to standard DC motors is that the motor’s speed can be controlled very accurately using six-step commutation, making it a good choice for precision motion applications, such as robotics and drones.

Sensorless back-EMF and digital filtering

For most applications, monitoring of the back-EMF (back-electromotive force) signal of the unexcited phase winding is easier said than done, since it has significant noise distortion from PWM (pulse width modulation) commutation from the other energised windings. The  coupling  between  the  motor parameters, especially inductances, can induce ripple in the back-EMF signal that is synchronous with the PWM commutation.  As a consequence, this induced ripple on the back EMF signal leads to faulty commutation. Thus, the measurement challenge is how to accurately measure the zero-crossings of the back-EMF signal in the presence of PWM signals?

A standard solution is to use digital filtering, i.e. IIR, FIR or even a median (majority) filter. However, the challenge for most designers is how to find the best filter type and optimal filter specification for the motor under consideration.

The solution

The ASN Filter Designer allows engineers to work on speed and position sensorless BLDC motor control applications based on back-EMF filtering to easily experiment and see the filtering results on captured test datasets in real-time for various IIR, FIR and median (majority filtering) digital filtering schemes. The tool’s signal analyser implements a robust zero-crossings detector, allowing engineers to evaluate and fine-tune a complete sensorless BLDC control algorithm quickly and simply.

So, if you have a measurement problem, ask yourself:

Can I save time and money, and reduce the headache of design and implementation with an investment in new tooling?

Our licensing solutions start from just 125 EUR for a 3-month licence.

Find out what we can do for you, and learn more by visiting the ASN Filter Designer’s product homepage.

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