A Crew Location Recognition System for a Naval Ship by Applying Ubiquitous Technologies

Abstract

Recognition of real time locations of crews for a naval ship is important, not only for the operation efficiency but also for the safety of onboard crews in the ship. More than 100 crews are dwelling in a modern naval ship and they are involved in various duties. Moreover many visitors come in and out frequently while the ship is moored in a harbor. It sometimes requires considerable time and efforts to find a person for urgent mission. It would enhance the operational efficiency if locations of onboard crews are recognized and monitored in real time. An active type RFID tag, which has a specific ID number, is distributed to each crew member, which should be carried during his stay in the ship. A number of fixed type RFID readers are to be located at the major passages of the ship, which are connected to the main computer via Local Area Network. The location of a crew would be identified by the ID number of his RFID tag and the location of the RFID reader which detected the RFID tag. A middleware is needed to process the collected data in the main computer. The data is fed to application softwares, which actually display locations of the concerned crews. The software is coded using GUI (Graphic User Interface) for better user friendliness, which has the function of storing the location history of a crew, and sending warning messages to appropriate persons, if unallowable behavior is detected. An auxiliary naval ship is selected for an experimental application study of the proposed system. It turns out that the required budget and time for the realization of the system is within the allowable limits. But complementary measures to protect the privacy of onboard crews should be considered and adopted, before the application of the system is realized.