Date: Jan 15, 2014 Author: Claire Swedberg Source: RFID Journal (
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Lockheed Martin is adding real-time location system (RTLS) functionality to its Urban Operations Training System (UOTS) that allows military agencies training their warfighters to know each individual's exact location, and thus have accurate information for reviewing a training event. One of Lockheed Martin's customers is installing the RTLS-enabled UOTS system—though neither the identity of that agency nor its location could be disclosed. Lockheed Martin is employing the Near-Field Electromagnetic Ranging (NFER) RTLS system developed by Q-Track, of Huntsville, Al. Q-Track is providing its battery-powered tags, as well as readers (which Q-Track refers to as locators or receivers) and software to interpret location data and integrate that information into Lockheed's UOTS software platform.
To enable RTLS functionality, a Q-Track QT-640 soldier-tracking tag is attached to each trainee's vest.
The training of warfighters has grown more complex, as battlefields are often located in cities and a variety of indoor urban environments. Military and security agencies train soldiers or officers to understand such an environment, and to identify any threat and respond appropriately. The training often consists of sending fighters into an area—such as multiple vacant residential buildings or warehouses, or between buildings—to complete a simulated mission, such as securing the area and removing any remaining hostile forces. Other team members play the role of enemy combatants, and innocent bystanders and the trainees must respond appropriately to their presence.
One important component of the training is evaluating each individual's performance. Traditionally, without automation technology, this is accomplished by having a training officer physically watch the exercise, but the many separate rooms and otherwise complex environment of these urban training programs can make that option unfeasible. Lockheed Martin's UOTS program consists of cameras that record footage of the training exercises, as well as Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement Systems (MILES), which identify when soldiers fire their laser-based weapons and when others are hit by those lasers. The UOTS solution provides instructors with live data indicating which weapons are fired, as well as which individuals are hit, while cameras supply video footage that they begin recording upon sensing the presence of fighters, via motion or optical sensors. The system can also include location data derived from GPS technology, though GPS does not provide very specific location data, nor does it operate indoors.
With the RTLS technology, however, the location data becomes much more precise and can be collected indoors, according to Jeremy Riehl, Lockheed Martin's program manager for training and logistics solutions. In December 2013, the firm signed a $1.7 million contract with Q-Track to provide its RTLS technology for the unnamed customer. Lockheed Martin surveyed a variety of technology alternatives prior to selecting Q-Track's NFER RTLS solution for this application.
With the solution in place, a Q-Track soldier-tracking tag (model QT-640) is attached to the trainee's MILES vest, and enough locators are installed so that the system can determine a tag's location to an accuracy greater than 1 meter (3.3 feet). In that way, individuals can be located within a particular room, on a given floor, or in a specific location outdoors, between buildings.
Because Lockheed Martin adapts each UOTS installation to the agency's specific training area and needs, future installations may or may not include the RTLS technology, and the quantity of locators and tags used will vary. However, the installation now underway consists of 31 buildings on a 500,000-square-foot site, and Q-Track is providing sufficient locators to cover the entire area—a total of approximately 220 units.
Q-Track's NFER system is already in use by nuclear plant operators to train workers (see Nuclear Plant Operator Uses RFID to Promote Safety), as well as by hockey teams to track players. It is also being used as a collision-avoidance system, to prevent robotic cranes from colliding with human workers at a specific site, such as in a factory (see RFID Helps Halt Collisions Between People and Robots). The NFER system's battery-powered tags transmit at a frequency between 1 MHz and 1.2 MHz, with a long wavelength (hence, a long near-field region) measuring about 300 meters (984 feet). With most other commercially available RTLS tags, each tag transmits an RF signal encoded with a unique ID number that identifies that tag. Q-Track's tags, however, do not transmit a unique ID. Rather, says Steve Werner, Q-Track's CEO, each NFER tag is identified based on the specific frequency at which it transmits (a system can accommodate up to 84 tags). The locators are typically installed about every 60 feet, and each unit evaluates the near-field properties of a tag's signals and then applies an RF "fingerprinting algorithm" to locate that tag to within a specific accuracy of a meter or less.
For the installation now underway at an urban operations training site consisting of 31 buildings, Q-Track is providing a total of about 220 locators.
That location data is then included in the UOTS system, enabling it to display icons representing each fighter, as well as the room or other location in which that individual is located, in real time. For historical data, the technology also allows users to determine where an individual has been, how long they were there, the direction in which they traveled, and where they may have fired a weapon or been fired upon. The RTLS data can also be employed by the UOTS system to confirm individuals' locations, and thereby trigger cameras to begin recording (as redundancy or replacement for motion or optical sensors).
"The real takeaway is flexibility," says Eric Richards, Q-Track's chief scientist and Lockheed Martin contract project manager. With dozens of buildings being monitored, a user sees where an individual fighter is or has been, who has been within his or her vicinity, when this occurred, and how he or she responded to that. It can also enable users to determine who may be in a specific room or building, or outdoors, or when a trainee came into contact with a bystander or enemy combatant.
Locators, which measure approximately 8.5 inches by 10.5 inches by 7.3 inches in size, are typically mounted high on walls. They can have a wired power source if a customer does not intend to move them, or they can take batteries. Calibrating the locators, Richards says, "is simple, fast and robust against small-scale changes in environment, such as furniture, doors and minor electrical changes." He estimates that readers can be calibrated, once installed, at a rate of 5,000 square feet for every man-hour of labor.
