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KAIST Develops Indoor Location Tracking Technology with No Blind Spots
- Writing language: Korean
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Summarized by durumis AI
- A research team led by Professor Kim Sung-min in the Department of Electrical Engineering at KAIST has developed a technology that enables precise location tracking without blind spots in smart factories.
- This technology uses battery-free, ultra-low-power tags to track 3D locations with sub-centimeter accuracy, even in environments with obstacles.
- This technology overcomes the limitations of existing technologies and provides 15 times higher location accuracy, making it expected to be used in various fields such as smart factories and augmented reality.
- Applicable to smart factories
- Awarded Best Paper Award multiple times
- Ultra-low power, battery-free tag
Source - KAIST
A research team led by Professor Kim Sung-min of the Department of Electrical Engineering at KAIST announced that it has developed the world's first technology that can accurately track objects in smart factories without blind spots. This technology can track 3D positions with an accuracy of less than a centimeter even in situations with obstacles by attaching battery-free tags.
Through this research, Professor Kim Sung-min's team won the Best Paper Award at ACM MobiSys, the most prestigious international conference in the field of mobile computing, in 2022 and 2024. KAIST announced that only Professor Kim Sung-min's team, the University of Michigan, and Yale University in the US have won the Best Paper Award multiple times at this conference.
The wireless tag developed by the research team uses millimeter waves (mmWave) that have more than 10 times the reflectivity of existing UWB technologies, securing reflected signals that bypass obstacles for blind-spot-free location tracking. The tag generates unique signals depending on the direction of reflection, and tracks the target object's location by identifying the propagation paths of each signal.
This technology solves the problem of existing technologies, where the operating range is limited due to various indoor obstacles such as furniture and electronic equipment, and provides 15 times higher 3D position accuracy (8.3mm). Therefore, compared to current technologies that experience frequent connection failures, it can accurately track the location of indoor objects stably, making it applicable to a wide range of location-based services such as smart factories and augmented reality (AR).
The wireless tag operates by reflecting surrounding signals instead of generating its own wireless signals. Similar to the principle of a mirror that reflects surrounding light, it saves power required for signal generation, operates with ultra-low power, and can operate battery-free using solar cells or run for more than 40 years with a single coin cell.
"The tag uses surrounding objects like ceiling tiles or computer cases as reflectors to operate without blind spots in any indoor environment," said Professor Kim Sung-min. "By resolving the stability issue in indoor location tracking, we expect the widespread adoption of comprehensive location-based services."