By coupling airborne drones with smarter RFID systems, MIT researchers have developed a system that enables small, safe, aerial drones to read RFID tags in large warehouses, possibly making missing packages a thing of the past and saving retailers billions lost through faulty inventory records.
Retailers lose $45B worth of inventory every year due to misplaced packages, stolen merchandise, and returned goods.
In 2013, Walmart lost up to $3B due to discrepancies between inventory records and actual stock, according to Forbes.
Now drone-based package-tracking tech could finally help solve this problem.
New research from MIT proposes lightweight drones that can help track and manage inventory in large-scale environments by allowing passive, long-range radio frequency identification (RFID) scanning.