System for Identifying and Controlling Material Flow on A Worksite

Construction sites have dozens of subcontractors working on separate aspects of a project, and all receiving countless material deliveries daily. The workers of these subcontractors try to place material where it is most efficient for their work, however subcontractors often unintentionally coincide.

Motivated by the need to solve this problem identified in contemporary construction sites, and inspired by the endless possibilities autonomy could unlock in the future, the team designed and prototyped the Trace system. The Trace system has three main components shown in Figure 1 that ultimately empower general contractors to have a more organized and efficient worksite: (1) a tag that is attached to material as it enters a site, and then uploads its location to the cloud, (2) a hub unit that is used to charge the tags and push information about the material to the tags, (3) an iOS app that construction workers and managers can use to receive the location information in a useful manner, which includes a system that allows area to be reserved in space and time, and a path planning feature that intelligently finds the most efficient route around obstacles.