Invented by Raghavendra Kulkarni, Sharath Narahari, Ravindar Roopreddy, Cloudleaf Inc

The market for systems, methods, and devices for asset status determination is rapidly growing as businesses and organizations seek to improve their asset management processes. Asset status determination refers to the process of identifying the current condition, location, and other relevant information about an asset. This information is critical for making informed decisions about maintenance, repair, and replacement of assets. The market for asset status determination systems, methods, and devices is driven by several factors. One of the primary drivers is the increasing complexity of assets. As assets become more complex, it becomes more difficult to track their status manually. Asset status determination systems, methods, and devices automate this process, making it easier and more efficient. Another driver of the market is the increasing importance of asset management. As businesses and organizations rely more heavily on their assets, they need to have a better understanding of their status. Asset status determination systems, methods, and devices provide this understanding, allowing businesses to make better decisions about their assets. The market for asset status determination systems, methods, and devices is also driven by the increasing use of technology in asset management. Many businesses are adopting digital asset management systems, which require accurate and up-to-date information about assets. Asset status determination systems, methods, and devices provide this information, making them an essential component of digital asset management. There are several types of asset status determination systems, methods, and devices available on the market. One of the most common is RFID (radio frequency identification) technology. RFID tags can be attached to assets, allowing them to be tracked and identified automatically. This technology is widely used in industries such as logistics, manufacturing, and healthcare. Another type of asset status determination system is GPS (global positioning system) technology. GPS devices can be attached to assets, allowing them to be tracked and located in real-time. This technology is commonly used in industries such as transportation and logistics. Other types of asset status determination systems, methods, and devices include barcode scanners, sensors, and software applications. Each of these technologies has its own strengths and weaknesses, and businesses need to choose the technology that best fits their needs. In conclusion, the market for systems, methods, and devices for asset status determination is growing rapidly as businesses and organizations seek to improve their asset management processes. This market is driven by several factors, including the increasing complexity of assets, the importance of asset management, and the increasing use of technology in asset management. There are several types of asset status determination systems, methods, and devices available on the market, and businesses need to choose the technology that best fits their needs.

The Cloudleaf Inc invention works as follows

The system includes at least a battery-powered Bluetooth Low Energy enabled leaf-node device. This device is connected via BLE to the leaf-node. It creates a number of sectorized beams and collects data from the leaf-node device in at lease one of these sectors. A location processing facility then determines the location in real time of the leaf-node device using the data collected by this beam-forming reader-node.

Background for Systems, Methods and Devices for Asset Status Determination

The asset management system is software that continuously inputs real-time data, where each node is associated with a specific asset. It organizes the data in a coherent manner; offers methods for extracting useful information and knowledge; and provides potential methods for directing those nodes.

Asset management systems can be used to manage the manufacturing, storage, delivery, and other logistical aspects of physical goods.

The tracking of such goods is critical. It provides crucial information to controlling industrial entities, such as the current and historical location, the current and historical rate at which they are moving, the current and past state of those goods (such as humidity, temperature and shock), the current and previous state data regarding these goods.

Within the field of enterprise asset management, physical asset management includes various methods and systems that help various types of enterprises manage various physical and infrastructure assets, including in relation to design, construction, commissioning, operating, maintaining, repairing, modifying, replacing and decommissioning/disposal of such physical and infrastructure assets, which may include equipment, tools, structures, production and service plants, power generating assets, water and waste treatment assets, facilities, distribution networks, transport systems, buildings, inventory, supplies, vehicles, products, information technology systems, and a wide range of other physical assets. There are now information technology systems that help manage and catalog physical assets. These include systems for recording the locations of assets and systems that use networking technologies such as RFID and WiFi to collect and store certain data about assets.

The prior art in asset management systems fails to provide continuous, instantaneous access of all tracked states or to instantly inform operators of events requiring their attention.

The challenges of prior art Wi-Fi systems and RFID include: “Range, real time access to data, interference, scalability and physical constraints. Centralized control and power consumption is also a challenge.” Wi-Fi is a great choice for its decent range, and it has the right protocols in place at every level of the software stack. However, Wi-Fi requires a lot of power, making a system based solely on battery-powered Wi-Fi device unfeasible. RFID is limited by its range, as a reader has to be within range of the asset before it can retrieve information.

The above list is not exhaustive of all the shortcomings that an asset management system with BLE (hereafter “BLEATS”) can address. In embodiments, a BLEATs asset management system may comprise a software system that continuously inputs current real-time data such as from a set of computationally intelligent tags where each tag physically associates with some assets; coherently organizes these data; provides methods to extract useful information and knowledge from these data; and potentially provides methods to direct those tags. “In embodiments, a BLEATs Asset Management System may consist of a software that continuously inputs real-time current data, for example, from a set or computationally intelligent tags where each tag is physically associated with certain assets, coherently organizes this data, provides methods to extract valuable information and knowledge from this data and provides potential methods to direct these tags.

This disclosure assumes that those with the necessary knowledge and skills have a thorough understanding of Bluetooth Low Energy devices and protocols, and Internet Physical Devices and Protocols.

The BLEATS system described in this document is advantageous from the following perspectives:

The present disclosure describes a real-time location system for at least a leaf node. According to a disclosed non-limiting embodiment, the system can include a location processor located on a remote server from the at the least a leaf node; and at the least a beam forming gateway for collecting sectorized information relating to the at the least a leaf node.

Another embodiment of any of these foregoing embodiments may include situations in which the leaf node can be adapted to use Bluetooth Low Energy and deployed as an asset label on a physical item.

Another embodiment of any one of the above embodiments may include situations in which the beam-forming gateway node, and the leaf node, can communicate at a distance of not more than 20 feet with no more than 10mW of energy.

The present disclosure describes a management system for information related to a leaf-node device. According to one disclosed nonlimiting embodiment, the system can include at least one Bluetooth low energy-enabled device that is adapted to communicate through a Gateway node, and a processing-engine located on a remote server for managing information relating the leaf-node.

Another embodiment of any one of the above embodiments of the disclosure may include situations in which the gateway node forms a beam.

A further embodiment of one or more of the previous embodiments may include situations in which the managed information contains at least one of location information for the node leaf, event information about the node leaf, state information regarding the node leaf, and sensor information collected by the node leaf.

The present disclosure describes a method for asset tagging. According to one non-limiting embodiment, the system can include at least one leaf communication node, which is adapted to attach to a physical asset. This leaf communication node has been configured to communicate continuously in real time, using the Bluetooth Low Energy Protocol, with at least a receiver node, which collects information in real time about the location of multiple assets.

A further embodiment of one or more of the previous embodiments may include situations in which the assets are at least human assets, manufacturing assets, and inventory assets.

The present disclosure describes a real-time location management system of at lease one leaf-node device. According to a disclosed non-limiting version of the present disclosure, the system can include a remote location processor facility located on a remote server for determining location; at the least, one beam-forming receiver hardware device for collecting and transmitting sectorized data related to the leaf-node; and, at the least, one Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE-enabled) user device with an application to communicate with the beam-forming receiver hardware a

Another embodiment of any one of the above embodiments of the disclosure can include situations in which at least one node leaf is deployed on a physical asset as an asset tag.

The present disclosure describes a real-time location method of at least one device leaf node. According to a disclosed non-limiting embodiment, the method can include taking at least signal strength information (or proximity information) and phase angle data collected via Bluetooth Low Energy communications signals from the device leaf node; delivering this information to a remote processing engine; and processing it in real time to locate the device leaf node.

The present disclosure describes a real-time location system for at least one device leaf node. According to one non-limiting embodiment, the system can include at least a beam forming gateway for managing data related to at least ONE leaf node.

Click here to view the patent on Google Patents.