Ultra Wideband: Nondago Project

Article written by SPRI

The consortium of Basque companies in the NONDAGO project will invest 2,170,500.66 euros until 2023 in a research project to optimise the real-time tracking of all moving elements in a production plant and translate this into improvements in operational safety, productivity and in-plant logistics in Industry 4.0.

The project, which began in 2021 and is funded by SPRI´s Hazitek programme, combines the design of new positioning devices, "capable of operating in hostile environments" (with advanced technologies such as Ultra Wideband (UWB), 5G, Bluetooth 5.1AoA), advanced data analytics and the development of management software "for visualisation and decision-making" on plant activity.

Among other specific objectives, NONDAGO will seek to develop and optimise "more than 10 industrial positioning products and services" applied to specific cases such as tracking the movements of cranes, forklifts or robotic arms, mould and tooling changes, as well as monitoring people in confined spaces.

Thus, with the support of data analytics and management software, the aim is to optimise plant movements and send alerts in order to improve the safety of operations and reduce production times and costs.

The first year of the project has concluded with the definition of the requirements, specifications and background of existing developments, devices and management platforms, and work is currently underway on research into new devices, real-time data analytics and location information management platforms for implementation in the industry.

Specifically, work is being done on aspects such as low-power positioning systems, systems that provide reliable positioning data both indoors and outdoors, new algorithms in environments where tracking is more complicated (where there are continuous changes between indoors and outdoors, or movements also occur at height), and tools that simplify the remote configuration of all tools.

All of this will allow benefits for the industry such as more efficient and flexible processes, with improvements in safety and automation of operations, as well as improvements in the products developed. Also, thanks to the optimisation of movements, a reduction in the use of resources and in the environmental impact of many current processes.

To achieve this, the project will have to respond to challenges such as the need to provide accurate height estimation, in addition to positioning in the plant (something important in machinery movements such as cranes); interoperability with other existing positioning systems, and research into new artificial intelligence algorithms to improve real-time tracking.

The project is focusing on Radio Frequency technologies, and in particular UWB (Ultra Wideband) technology, as it has the best characteristics in terms of accuracy and power consumption and thus achieves the scientific-technical objective of 20 centimetre accuracy to facilitate the deployment of positioning technologies in industrial environments. In addition to UWB, other technologies such as NB-IOT, 5G, Bluethooth 5.1AoA or Laser will also be used.

About NONDAGO

NONDAGO is an innovation project in advanced positioning technologies for the improvement of productivity, safety and logistics in Industry 4.0 and Factories of the Future. The consortium of entities that develop it is made up of complementary profiles to address the challenge posed by the optimisation of processes in the industrial sector from the perspective of positioning as the vehicle axis.

NONDAGO is led by Deusto Seidor and made up of the companies DOMINION and its Environmental Services and R&D team, Geograma, IDK, i2U, SEGULA Technologies and VI4Crane and the centres of the Basque Science, Technology and Innovation Network (RVCTI) Ceit and the Mobility and Logistics Cluster of the Basque Country, representing the segments of developers and suppliers of electronic devices; positioning systems; capture, processing and analysis of geographic information (Indoor Mapping), and entities wishing to use positioning systems to develop innovative services or products.

NONDAGO is a project supported by the Basque Government, through the Hazitek programme.

Source text: Spri