NEWS & EVENTS
Agricultural Applications:
Real-time Information System - Critical Information on the Status of your Agriculture Operations
eRoutes has real-time information and traceability capabilities for agriculture works.
Tracking the Haul of Produce with RFID Technology.
The AgTag application automates tracking of crop
harvesting. The solution combines the best of GPS, RFID
and wireless communications technologies to provide
real-time visibility into field harvesting activities
anywhere, anytime. Using this solution, growers and
harvesters can track the exact location, timing and
efficiency of each harvester, as well as the arrival,
loading and departure time of crop transport vehicles.
The harvesting of crops is a time-sensitive operation
that requires coordination between growers, harvesters
and transportation vehicle operators to obtain the
maximum yield from each harvest. Reliance on current
manual tracking methods can hinder coordination and slow
work flows in the field, adversely impacting product
quality.
Trucks are detected at every stage of the transport process.At the machine an installed RFID reader detects the truck that is
being loaded. At the scale, our patent pending PrintUp capture
device reads the truck load tickets when they are printed and
transmits that data to eRoutes. When the truck arrives at the
processing/storage facility we detect it using RFID readers at
the entrances to the facility. When the truck is dumping we detect
which one is dumping by installing RFID readers at the dump site.
The truck arrival time and location are sent through cellular
networks to eRoutes servers.
A Geographic Information System is part of AgTag and gives very detailed
information regarding the location of every machine in the field. Through
AgTag portal, graphical information about the machine and trucks is shown
and provides data related to the load such as Truck ID, Machine ID, field,
grower, GPS location, speed, etc.
Detailed timing analysis, in the form of a Gantt chart or a table, provides time of arrival at the
machine, time of loading, time of departure from the machine, transport time
to the scale, time waiting at the scale, time of unload at storage/processing,
time spent unloading, time of departure from the storage/processing and finally
transportation time back to the machine. The distance covered by the machine with
a truck and the position of the machine when the truck loads are also provided.
RFID Technology
AgTag uses 'ILR' (Intelligent Long Range) active tags.
This technology features a field loop marker providing two detection ranges: a
long range of about 300 feet and a short range of about 10 feet. With this technology
waiting trucks are detected around the harvester while the truck being serviced is singled
out. Minds Inc and RFID leader IDENTEC (www.identecsolutions.com) have established a
partnership to bring this technology to the operations of the agriculture industry.
