It was seven years ago that Zebra introduced the ATR7000. It was and still is touted as an RTLS reader using passive RFID tags. And it is capable of that real time locating, but it is also affordable enough to be used for more pedestrian tasks, with much lower software overhead.
The ATR7000 is also called an array reader, and that is more the way the we are currently using it in applications. An RFID reader with many antennas reading a rather large area, searching for tags in its field of view. The reader needs to be mounted 15 to 20 feet in the air in order to read effectively. And it can cover around 2,000 square feet of floor space.
The easiest to implement application is just an absence / presence of a particular tag in the field of view for a reader. If you have many readers within your facility, you now know that the product or asset that you are looking for is in a particular area. From there, you can tell what quadrant the reader is picking up the tag in, further isolating the location.
The next level of capability of the reader is to determine directionality of a tag. Did the product come or go. This is particularly helpful in dock door or tool room applications when you are tracking items and determining if they are coming or going.
And then, the final, most complicated application to do is locating, using Zebra’s CLAS software as the locationing engine. Some pretty serious back-end coding needs to take place in order to use this capability. Some applications definitely demand this level of tracking. Usually, we find that the customer is satisfied with the less granular capability of knowing which ATR is seeing the product and which quadrant it is in. Or we then use mobile readers to do a Geiger counter type of locating once the operator is in the general vicinity of the target tag.
The bottom line is that this product is one of the many in our tool belt when we go to see a customer and work on an RFID application. Something that we find ourselves doing more and more as this technology matures and is adopted by more industries.
If you are looking for a technology partner who has great experience getting RFID technology to work, the EMP Tech Group is here for you, www.emptechgroup.com is always the best place to find us.