Integrated inventory management system for outdoors stocks based on small UAV and beacon

Abstract

Inventory tracking/auditing is a task which must be carried out continuously to ensure the efficiency of the supply chain and to meet with regulatory requirements. Even though automated methods such as bar code and RFID are being used in most firms, it is time-consuming and labor-intensive, especially, when stocks are bulky, big-sized and stored in multi-tier at outdoors environment. As a remedy to the above situation, the aim of this paper is to find a solution for rapid inventory tracking and auditing using human-controlled UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) equipped with iBeacon-based ID reader. The system architecture which consists of inventory management server, UAV-based mobile data scanner and iBeacon-based signal transmitter was proposed in this paper. And, based on this architecture, a prototype system was developed. ? Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018.