Use Cases

A selection of our recent projects and realistic use cases where we developed RFID sensor networks for Industrial Internet of Things and Industry 4.0

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PHARMA PACKAGING

Pharma Packaging

The effectiveness of drugs, and their storage, are strongly correlated to the local environmental condition inside the packages during the manufacturing. Measuring such conditions generally requires invasive modifications of the processes. By teaming up with a world Big-Pharma leader, RADIO6ENSE pushed the quality control of the manufacturing chain right inside bottles of pills. In a few months, the customer was enabled to measure the microclimate (temperature and humidity) into drug packages without modifying the manufacturing line. The enabler is ad-hoc designed flexible miniaturized wireless sensors, suitable for insertion inside even small drug container filled with capsules. The required energy is provided from the outside so that the sensor can work as long as required without any battery replacement.

CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

Chemical Industry

Predictive maintenance is one of the pillars of Industry 4.0, especially for industries integrating equipment that are at continuous risk of failure. The challenge of implementing the predictive maintenance in chemical industries is mainly due to the big number of elements to be simultaneously checked in real-time, the complexity of the infrastructure itself and the limited accessibility of a so harsh environment. For a major chemical company, RADIO6ENSE designed, and deployed in a short time, a complex RFID-based monitoring system, tailored for the specific plant, that exploit hundreds of sensors and multiple readers to observe the chemical-physical variations of pipes filled with hot vapor and to stream data to a cloud service for a real-time control, from anywhere.

IMPLANTED DEVICES

Implanted Devices

Conventional medical devices, spanning from the simple plasters, bandages, nails, catheters, and dental implants, up to the much more complex orthopedic fixations, prostheses, and cardiac valves, that are used over the large scale in the great majority of medical practice, are entering in the era of Digital Transformation too. RADIO6ENSE is teaming up with world-leader biomedical companies to support the Digital Transformation of their assessed biomedical products into data generators to exploit the framework of Data-driven and Precision Medicine. Thanks to a solid scientific multi-physics background, RADIO6ENSE makes the medical objects sensing and communicating with minimal mechanical and material changes, thus minimizing the certifications duties.

FRUIT
RIPENING

Fruit Ripening

Fruit waste can be minimized provided that fruit ripening level can be monitored in real time through low-cost systems. RADIO6ENSE teams up with ILIP S.r.L. to push the fruit industry toward the digital era of data-driven processes, where the fruit itself becomes a data-generator. The enabler is here a new family of fruit bowl integrated with low-cost RFID labels, and empowered by an Artificial Intelligence engine that is capable to estimate the ripening level of the fruit starting from low-cost nondestructive measurements and Machine Learning methods. The system is suitable to integration in the retail, to arrange ready-to-eat shelves, as well as in industrial ripening chambers with hundreds and thousand of fruits.

CONVEYOR
BELTS

Conveyor Belts

The manufacturing of conveyor belts for harsh industrial applications (like mines) requires a highly controlled vulcanization and soldering of elastomeric compounds. RADIO6ENSE teamed with a conveyor belt manufacturer to introduce accurate temperature measurements from the inside of the products just during soldering. Ad-hoc designed RFID-based temperature sensors with no battery onboard were integrated into the rubber compound to provide a real-time temperature feedback to the soldering machinery so that it can optimize the process for the specific material without any change in the existing machinery.

SWITCHGEAR AND
ELECTRICAL
EQUIPMENT

Switchgear and Electrical Equipment

The maintenance effectiveness of power plants can be optimized by means of continuous and distributed thermal monitoring of critical electrical components and junctions. RADIO6ENSE supported the CRTS company, leader in Switch-Gear manufacturing, in providing their products with embedded multi-point temperature monitoring. In a few months, the company was enabled to make the first tests and to plan a pilot project in a large plant. The custom system developed by RADIO6ENSE comprised battery-less industrial-grade RFID temperature sensors and an ad-hoc data streaming infrastructure, edge computing, cloud storage and real-time data analytics on relevant KPIs.

CRITICAL
SCENARIOS

Critical Infrastructures

RADIO6ENSE was an R&D partner in the Horizon2020 project SCISSORS (Security in Trusted SCADA and Smart-Grids) project. RADIO6ENSE developed a new wireless platform for real-time surveillance of electrical, thermal, and nuclear plants against Physical Attacks (side channel attacks). The system comprised a pervasive network of wireless battery-less sensors, to be spread in the critical ares. Physical data (temperature, current overload, humidity, intrusions) are collected locally by a network of readers and remotely streamed for automatic identification of threats and anomalies.

SMART
BANDAGES

Smart Bandages

Compression therapy is recognized as the main treatment for both the preventive and therapeutic care of venous disease. Its effectiveness is strictly related to the proper tensioning and pressure exerted by each bandage layer. Following the paradigm of e-Health, RADIO6ENSE have supported a company leader in the compression therapy to equip their kits with low-cost pressure measurement. The enabling technology is a flexible, soft and battery-less wireless pressure sensor suitable to integration with the bandage and communicating with a wireless interrogator provided with display. The system is also useful as training aid for caregivers.

Radio6ense Ecosystem