UAV-RFID Integration for Construction Resource Localization

Location data of construction resources are important in understanding on the context of a construction site, yet most sites still rely on people’s observations to localize their resources. Among then various localization technologies, radio frequency identification (RFID) is considered as a good solution. However, RFID either provides limited location data when fixed receivers are used, or it requires considerable manpower for scanning the tagged resources when hand-held receivers are used. These requirements result in inefficiency and impractical demands on time and cost, particularly in the case of complex or large-scale sites. This study attempted to overcome the limitations by proposing an integrated unmanned aerial vehicle-RFID (UAV-RFID) platform to replace the considerable manpower with the UAV and to enable identifying tags on a site. It applies deep learning algorithms to localize an RFID tag position within an acceptable range of accuracy, thereby demonstrating the feasibility of the integrated platform for construction resource localization.