Start-up Receptic develops first fully-automated tool tracking system

It is the first patented system for the automated localisation of objects and was created in response to a direct need on the part of companies. A project that has developed from the cooperation between elektro a.haller, Eurac Research and lvh.apa and that recently reached a milestone: the foundation of the start-up Receptic. The three players have been brought together by NOI Techpark, the South Tyrol innovation hub whose mission is to put research at the service of local companies and promote active collaboration between institutions, laboratories and private companies. What does it consist of? Every year, craftsmen and companies - especially when working on construction sites or in assembly - lose valuable tools, including measuring tools, work lights or drilling machines. This causes financial damage to companies and limits their efficiency. Until now, there has been no tool that allows tools to be tracked without intervention by craftsmen. The idea of developing an automatic digital tool tracking system first emerged during a lvh.apa workshop and was taken forward during the 2019 NOI Hackathon. As planned by the initiative, for 24 hours several teams of developers together with the craftsmen of elektro a.haller worked on possible solutions. The company was so impressed by the results that it commissioned the Center for Sensing Solutions of Eurac Research to prepare a first technical feasibility study. This work was partly supported by Lab Bonus, the co-financing instrument made available by the Province of Bolzano for applied research activities in the laboratories of the NOI Techpark. "We wanted to develop a system that would prevent the loss of work tools, without extra work for the craftsmen. Thanks to the network of lvh.apa and NOI Techpark and the support of the Eurac Research team, we were able to find a promising solution. A system that we are further developing with our partner A-Net and that will be very useful not only for us but for many craft businesses in South Tyrol and beyond," says Receptic's managing director Mirko Haller.
"Compared to other systems, our solution is based on a combination of small transponders - beacons - and a gateway that can automatically manage these transponders," explains Roberto Monsorno, director of the Center for Sensing Solutions. "The beacons, which are attached to the individual tools, communicate with the gateways, such as the warehouse, the construction site or the delivery truck, and immediately signal, via specific software, if one or more tools are missing."