NEWS & EVENTS
Agricultural Applications:
Real-time harvester tracking Information System - Critical Information on the Status of your Agriculture Harvesting Operations
eRoutes is real-time information and traceability system intended for the agriculture works.
eRoutes provides the following services:
- AgTag: Harvester Tracking and tracking the haul of harvested goods with RFID technology
Tracking the Haul of Produce with RFID Technology.
The AgTag application tracks harvesting operations and trucks from the field to the processing/storage facility using inexpensive RFID tags. The system automatically collects ticket data, computes transportation and waiting times and ensures total traceability on loads delivered.
Trucks are detected at every stage of the transport process. At the harvester 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 harvester in the field. Through the AgTag portal, graphical information about the harvester and trucks is shown and provides data related to the load such as Truck ID, Harvester 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 harvester, time of loading, time of departure from the harvester, 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 harvester. The distance covered by the harvester with a truck and the position of the harvester 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.
