Context-based monitoring of logistic process events using passive UHF RFID technology

Systems and applications within the industry 4.0 have a high demand for accurate and up-to-date information or context about their environment. A fundamental type of information is the identity of objects. In future systems, there is also an increased need for context on the location and the status of identified objects. RFID can already address the demand for location information by signal processing. In this paper, we describe a smart RFID reader that is furthermore able to collect and process context on logistic objects by including logistic data sources. The enhanced usage of context allows for an adaptable system that is able to analyze its measurements to recognize and report logistic process events. In order to obtain this functionality we extract the spatial structure of operation environments from 2D-CAD layouts of the warehouse. For the detection of process events, we developed a method to validate the measurements by reasoning. To obtain basic rules for the reasoning, we describe an ontology on basic interactions between logistic objects. The basic rules are then synchronized with the data form a warehouse management system by processing a form of decision trees.