Enhancing Worker Safety in Unmanned Agricultural Environments through the Integration of RFID, RTK, UWB, and LIDAR: Insights from Research Projects

The "SMARTGRID" project, funded by the Italian National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work, integrates RFID tags and BLE devices to identify obstacles and workers within 10 meters of unmanned tractors, providing alerts and emergency stop procedures through an IoT infrastructure. The follow-up project "SIRTRACK" improves the system by adding UWB localizers, LIDARs, depth cameras, and RTK navigation systems to detect and track obstacles, and merges all information into an alert system for the remote driver. This paper presents the results of the SMARTGRID project and the conceptual idea of the SIRTRACK system.