The Internet of Things and the tracking and monitoring of freight

Australia’s freight system is the lifeblood of the economy, delivering around four billion tonnes of goods across the country each year. Volumes continue to increase, with urban freight forecast to grow by about 80 per cent over 20 years to 2036.

Unfortunately, goods do not flow smoothly around the country, with congestion costing the economy $25 billion per annum, which is estimated to rise to $40 billion by 2030.

Australia’s freight transport ecosystem is fragmented, involving a large number of operators, including transport companies, distribution centres, warehousing, parcel couriers, and intermediaries. Each parcel/consignment journey may involve several transfers and tracking is heavily dependent on multiple scanning instances variously utilising paper-based consignment notes, product barcodes or Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags.

Tracking procedures are primarily manual, making them prone to errors. As a result, freight management businesses and customers regularly have to deal with delays which can cause planning uncertainties, stock shortages and lost consignments.

In response to these challenges, the Low-cost IoT-based solution for tracking and monitoring of freight project developed an innovative low-cost Internet of Things (IoT)-based solution, which can provide real-time insights into freight location and condition, including maintaining cold chains. Participants on the project were iMOVE, Swinburne University of Technology and the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts (DITRDCA).

Below is an overview of the project, including a conclusion and additional work, and the project’s final report is available for download.

Objectives

The project aimed to develop an IoT solution for live tracking and condition monitoring of individual parcel/consignments across multiple freight carriers and transport modes. It set out to investigate the specific requirements of form factor, battery life, cost, standards and cloud-based data analytics required to reliably track and monitor individual parcel/consignments, in real time, across the entire supply chain.

The objective was to make the hardware low-powered and low-cost, with a small form factor, to offer a practical solution to support both short- and long-haul freight requirements.

The solution requires hardware equipped with sensors for monitoring the location and condition of the parcel/consignment, along with embedded software for sending sensor data to the cloud. On the back end, the solution requires cloud-based sensor data analytics, which incorporates machine learning (ML) models for detecting and visualising transport and freight consignment-related events of interest.

Methodology

The project involved identifying, assessing, devising and trialling suitable IoT technologies capable of tracking and monitoring freight parcel/consignment conditions in real-time.

The project methodology was divided into several key milestones:

• Gathering requirements – including consultations with an industry partner – for an IoT-based solution for tracking and condition monitoring
• Designing a low-powered, small form factor and low-cost hardware and software solution
• Developing and testing the solution
• In-field pilot testing the solution in a range of scenarios, including maintaining cold chains.

Requirements for real-time monitoring

The solution’s primary requirements revolved around size, cost and power limitations in order to make it acceptable to freight operators.

A streamlined, minimalistic hardware design is required for seamless integration into the existing supply chain without adding significant physical bulk. Any solution must also avoid interfering with a parcel/consignments’ contents and overall packaging integrity.

Some supply chain use cases such as cold chains require comprehensive condition monitoring, merging various sensing parameters and monitoring over time.

At the same time, there is a pressing need for a cost-efficient solution that doesn’t compromise on performance, while aligning with the financial constraints of the freight industry.

Any feasible solution also requires low power demands and a long battery life, or preferably the ability to utilise energy harvesting techniques for a truly autonomous operation. Batteries need to be small and lightweight, but still support long-haul shipments that may take anywhere between days to one or two weeks to move from origin to destination.

In addition to addressing hardware constraints, the project had to address the lack of comprehensive software support for such tracking solutions. Software support requires efficient device management, real-time tracking and the ability to extract and analyse meaningful data.

A low-cost IoT freight monitoring solution

The IoT hardware developed by the project includes an array of onboard sensors such as temperature and humidity sensors, an accelerometer and a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) module. It also includes an LTE cellular network connection and onboard flash memory for the ability to retain data for later transmission to the cloud when network access is unavailable.

The solution platform also features a cloud backend, which stores and processes the collected data in a time-series database. The cloud platform facilitates interaction with multiple IoT devices for data acquisition through Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) and over-the-air (OTA) device management.

Solution architecture of the project

A rule-processing engine performs data analytics and generates alerts, while a user-friendly web dashboard allows end users to interact with various functions including:

• OTA device management
• Data visualisation of conditioning monitoring
• Visualisation and management of analytics and event alerts

Trial outcomes

Several trials were conducted to evaluate the IoT tracking solution in different real-world conditions.

Intra and interstate trials were conducted via Australia Post’s parcel post service. Cold-chain trails were also conducted intra and interstate, via trucking and rail.

For food-related trials, a multinational food franchise chain partnered with the project team in a trial monitoring the supply of key products and ingredients along their journey through 3PL and 4PL carriers. The trial product had strict low-temperature transport requirements, which if not met would lead to product quality issues and void the safety of the ingredients.

During the trial, the IoT devices remained stable and functioned well even in sub-zero temperatures. As expected, GNSS location fixes were limited – particularly within refrigerated environments – as GNSS typically relies on line-of-sight with the satellite. Hence, cellular positioning was chosen as the preferred method for product location, with GNSS location used only where the device had good satellite reception.

In most cases, devices were able to successfully operate for many days offline (i.e. in the absence of internet connection) and then sync stored data successfully to the cloud when an internet connection was re-established.

Only in one scenario, where loss of internet access due to week-long storage in an underground concrete car park, saw the onboard storage rewrite older data before it could be uploaded to the cloud.

Conclusions and next steps

The project successfully developed a compact IoT device, integrating a microcontroller, GPS and various sensors, that can track, monitor and report on freight consignment condition. The on-board battery can power the device for months, supporting both short- and long-haul freight scenarios.

The trial outcomes demonstrate the feasibility of a low-cost IoT solution for live tracking and condition monitoring of individual parcel/consignments.

With further tweaks to the hardware design, the IoT device can reach an AUD $50 price point (with large scale unit production).

The cloud software platform met the requirements of the freight scenario, including condition monitoring, device management and a web dashboard – allowing end users to obtain valuable data and corresponding insights into key freight events.

Swinburne’s research team is interested in further developing the solution and exploring commercialisation opportunities. It has already commenced negotiations regarding intellectual property of the solution with DITRDCA and iMOVE CRC.

The team believes that the outcome of this project offers a platform to develop a commercial offering and the solution has already received interest from multiple organisations in the freight transport and food processing sectors.

Download the final report

Download your copy of the final report, A low-cost IoT-based Solution for Tracking and Monitoring Freight Consignments, by clicking the button below.