Design and Development of the Smart Object for the IoT-enabled Smart Warehouse

This paper presents the design and development of the Internet of Things (IoT)-based smart object, smart hand pallet truck, for the IoT-enabled smart warehouse. The workflow and shifts studies were initially conducted to help identify potential technologies for the smart hand pallet truck. We selected the Ultra-High-Frequency Radio Frequency Identification (UHF RFID) technology for goods identification and tracking and selected the load cell technology for goods quantity validation. The RFID reader and load cells were implemented on the smart hand pallet truck and connected to the Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi processed and uploaded all incoming data to the server via the local Wi-Fi network. The web application was developed to analyze data and perform specific warehouse activities that entailed the use of a smart hand pallet truck. The web application also provided the intuitive Graphical User Interface (GUI) installed on the tablet on the smart hand pallet truck. The put-away scenario was adopted for the test. We found that the smart hand pallet truck could identify and track the goods-contained pallet, match the pallet with the put-away location, and complete the task with 100% accuracy.