Metrô Rio, Brazil’s second-largest subway system after São Paulo, spans 41 stations and 58 kilometers (36 miles) of railway. With an annual ridership of 228 million passengers, the system operates 52 trains during peak hours, comprising a total of 312 carriages. The transportation department at its maintenance center in Rio de Janeiro regularly inspects and maintains at least 12 such trains and 72 carriages.
During routine maintenance, workers face the time-consuming task of walking along the tracks to identify and locate carriages, assess their needs, transport them to appropriate maintenance positions, and finally locate the tools required for their work. Complicating matters, tools may sometimes be borrowed by other workers, leading to delays.
In response, the organization sought an effective way to track, identify, and simplify the maintenance team’s search for shared equipment. Metrô Rio turned to a Brazilian RFID technology company for a solution. Glaucia Gomes, an RFID and IoT business development expert at RFID Brasil, recalled that the team aimed to create a smart cabinet to track the entry and exit times of tools and identify their owners. The goal was to establish a solution to help maintenance supervisors and coordinators optimize their maintenance processes.
RFID Brasil and Metrô Rio applied RFID tags to tools and constructed cabinets equipped with a single RFID reader and antenna array. Positioned in front of the cabinet is a touchscreen, an RFID card reader, and a camera recording transactions. RFID Brasil provided software on the cabinet’s server to control and track tool usage, along with cloud-based software and applications.
To access the cabinet, each worker possesses an HF 13.56 MHz RFID ID card compliant with the ISO 15693 standard. Initially, they approach the cabinet, and their cards are scanned. The software stores data, including which individuals are authorized to access these tools. If authorized, the cabinet door unlocks. The touchscreen displays the available tools in the cabinet, along with checked-out files and the borrower’s information.
This paper is from Ulink Media, Shenzhen, China, the organizer of IOTE EXPO (IoT Expo in China)