Possibilities of Using Bluetooth Low Energy Beacon Technology to Locate Objects Internally: A Case Study

Abstract

The developments that are occurring in relation to Industry 4.0 are making it possible to automate a huge number of production activities. Automation includes the possibility of automatically identifying individual elements of a system. One of the options for doing this involves the use of Bluetooth Low Energy technology. The system’s advantages lie in its wide availability, economic simplicity, ability to design individual system elements, and overall system architecture. The system applied in the case study presented in this article consisted of beacons from Accent Systems and identification gateways based on the Raspberry Pi Zero W device. During several hours of testing, the functionality and reliability of all system components was demonstrated. The measurements showed that the system was able to determine the distance from a gate in line of sight with 94% accuracy. With regards to indirect visibility, when a metal crate was used to shield the beacon from the gateway, the system was able to determine the exact distance only 22% of the time. However, the variance between the actual and measured values was found to be small, therefore proving sufficient for most use cases. The major advantage of Bluetooth Low Energy beacons, and Bluetooth technology in general, is its massive ubiquity in the market. Since the Bluetooth module is part of every smartphone, this system can be made available to a wide range of users.