An IoT-Aware Smart System Exploiting the Electromagnetic Behavior of UHF-RFID Tags to Improve Worker Safety in Outdoor Environments

Recently, different solutions leveraging Internet of Things (IoT) technologies have been adopted to avoid accidents in agricultural working environments. As an example, heavy vehicles, e.g., tractors or excavators, have been upgraded with remote controls. Nonetheless, the community continues to encourage discussions on safety issues. In this framework, a localization system installed on remote-controlled farm machines (RCFM) can help in preventing fatal accidents and reduce collision risks. This paper presents an innovative system that exploits passive UHF-RFID technology supported by commercial BLE Beacons for monitoring and preventing accidents that may occur when ground-workers in RCFM collaborate in outdoor agricultural working areas. To this aim, a modular architecture is proposed to locate workers, obstacles and machines and guarantees the security of RCFM movements by using specific notifications for ground-workers prompt interventions. Its main characteristics are presented with its main positioning features based on passive UHF-RFID technology. An experimental campaign discusses its performance and determines the best configuration of the UHF-RFID tags installed on workers and obstacles. Finally, system validation demonstrates the reliability of the main components and the usefulness of the proposed architecture for worker safety.