Autonomous Container Inventory by RFID Capable Drones

Los Aamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) Robotic Augmentation and Novel Applications Team is currently developing a drone system with the capability of conducting an autonomous inventory of portable buildings. The system is using two drone platforms to track and inventory of portable enclosures on LANL property. There are currently more than 1400 of these portable enclosures present. Currently, an inventory will take approximately six months to complete. Using a long flight duration Vertical Take Off and Landing Drone (2.5 hours flight time at 55-60 mph) equipped with a high megapixel camera, the system is able to fly the entirety of the Site and GPS tag these containers in or to two days. In addition, we are researching the potential of physically attaching an RFID tag to each of the containers, then deploying the second drone platform to conduct inventory as needed at much higher efficiencies. The second drone is a high-power quad rotor drone with medium lift capacity, fitted with an RFID reader. All functions can be programmed to function autonomously through mission planning software as well as the scanning operations for data collection. In the paper we will present the current status of this project.