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The challenge

Provision of locational tracking technologies to suit industry needs

Industry demand for locational data and information in real time, in often difficult physical domains is increasing. The specialist team at CSIRO Data61 is developing locational tracking technologies that meet this demand though development of adaptive and innovative solutions.

Team CSIRO's Data61's work area in the mega cavern.
Team CSIRO's Data61's work area in the mega cavern.

CSIRO Data61 specialises in 'Pervasive tracking' which is the ability to understand the location and movement of assets, people or animals, at any point in time, and at a diversity of spatial scales from continent- to building- level.

Our response

Meeting the needs of Australian Industry

The Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) Program within CSIRO's Data61 has delivered a suite of locational tracking technology hardware and software solutions that can drive productivity improvements across a range of Australian sectors.

CPS Program outputs at a glance include:

  • Pervasive Autonomous Computing Platform (PACP) provides a significant size reduction on traditional devices
  • Camazotz mobile sensing platform enables long term wildlife tracking
  • LoCi platform uses new radio technologies such as LoRaWAN and Bluetooth and a more powerful CPU to enable modelling sensing for agricultural and construction applications
  • Bluetooth Low Energy Aware Tracking (BLEAT) provides a capability in low power sensing combined with low power Bluetooth indoor localisation
  • Sensor Scheduler software uses multiple sensing modalities to enable adaption to changing energy availability and motion patterns, and
  • Wireless Ad-hoc System for Positioning (WASP) is a world leading, high accuracy indoor localisation system, able to be customised to a wide range of challenging environments and demanding applications.

The results

Delivering a suite of technologies for Australia and the world

Australia's pervasive tracking capacity has been transformed by the CPS Program's development and adaptation of smaller sized tracking devices, innovative data collection and transfer methods, and advances in energy harvesting options, with pervasive tracking now available across difficult applications such as underground, and across large-scale geographic areas.

There is a recognised role for high resolution locational tracking technologies to deliver economic benefits in agriculture, underground mining and construction.

Some of these benefits are attributable to the CPS Program for the role that their research and development activities (in hardware and software) have had in advancing the state of locational tracking systems, particularly in terms of energy harvesting, delay tolerance systems and underground applications.

In agriculture, locational tracking technologies have been found to generate benefit cost ratios of 1.1 and 1.3 in beef production — where monitoring service costs are high, and 3.8 to 5.3 —where monitoring service costs are low, assuming a gradual path to adoption over 20 years. Based on agricultural R&D costs to date, a BCR of 1.1 to 1.3 points to a net present value of $3.6 million to $4.3 million attributable to the CPS Program.

In mining, improved underground tracking systems in mines have been associated with more timely diagnosis and rectification of mechanical issues, savings (8 per cent) in maintenance costs per ton of material hauled, reduced time required for evacuation and safety control tests, and large production increases (quadrupling) from various process improvements.

In construction, on-site locational technologies are estimated to generate benefits valued worth $96 million over ten years in net present value terms, with a BCR of 7.5 (excluding investment costs by CSIRO). The BCR for CSIRO's contribution is estimated at 4.9, based on the markets willingness to pay for accessing the technology.

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