Functional analysis of an Optical Real Time Locating System in production environments

Driven by the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0), Real Time Location Systems (RTLS) are gaining importance. Holistic information about the position and movement of persons, vehicles and goods is an essential prerequisite for being able to efficiently automate entire process chains in the future with increasing machine autonomy. RTLS technologies enable the spatial and temporal localisation of objects within an environment. The current technological standard in the field of RTLS is based on anchors and transponders (e.g. Ultra Wide Band (UWB) systems), which use radio frequency (RF) signals to determine positions. However, the need for additional technical equipment is also a major weakness of these systems. In this paper, a new technological approach for real-time localisation of objects for industrial applications is presented. The proposed optical RTLS (ORTLS) is based on a decentralised sensor network, which enables the positioning of persons, vehicles and objects in industrial environments by means of artificial intelligence (AI) based object detection. In order to be able to use the system for safety-relevant applications in the future, certification must be obtained with regard to applicable regulations. A prerequisite for this is the validation and monitoring of the system performance with regard to the requirements of functional safety. For the analysis and evaluation of the system performance, this paper presents a methodology for the analysis of the AI-based detection under consideration of the environmental factors.