IVAN: Intelligent Van for the Distribution of Pharmaceutical Drugs

Abstract

This paper describes a telematic system based on an intelligent van which is capable of tracing pharmaceutical drugs over delivery routes from a warehouse to pharmacies, without altering carriers’ daily conventional tasks. The intelligent van understands its environment, taking into account its location, the assets and the predefined delivery route; with the capability of reporting incidences to carriers in case of failure according to the established distribution plan. It is a non-intrusive solution which represents a successful experience of using smart environments and an optimized Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) embedded system in a viable way to resolve a real industrial need in the pharmaceutical industry. The combination of deterministic modeling of the indoor vehicle, the implementation of an <em>ad-hoc</em> radiating element and an agile software platform within an overall system architecture leads to a competitive, flexible and scalable solution.

Keywords

• intelligent van
• pharmaceutical drugs traceability
• incidences reporting
• non-intrusive
• RFID
• wireless technologies, deterministic 3D ray launching