RFID technology company raised 300 million yen to be combined with unmanned robots to improve inventory management efficiency

On April 26, 2021, Japanese RFID technology company RF Lucas announced that it has raised 300 million yen with the purpose of integrating with unmanned robots to further improve inventory management efficiency. The capital is Yasuda Warehouse and Mitsui Fudosan.

RF Lucas operates the inventory and item management system "Locus Mapping". The company was established in August 2015 and has so far received multiple rounds of financing.

RFID originally refers to the technology of reading data through radio waves. So far, barcodes and two-dimensional codes have been used for the management of commodities and items, but in recent years RFID has also begun to be used for the management of these items. After the introduction of RFID, there is no need to read individuals individually, and a large number of tags can be counted within a few seconds, even across a carton.

However, Tomoyuki Asano, director and COO of RF Lucas, said that although it is convenient to read multiple tags in a unified manner, it is not known that location information is a pain point of RFID. For example, if you read the RFID tag of a product in a store, you can confirm how many products there are, but you cannot know which shelf each product is on.

RF Lucas has realized the accurate positioning of RFID tags through a unique "wave phase analysis". The "Locus Mapping" automatic location acquisition and display digital mapping function utilizes this technology.

Tomoyuki Asano explained that the introduction of RF Lucas technology can significantly reduce the previous work of visual confirmation and barcode reading in stores and warehouses, such as product entry and exit, inventory, inspection, and pickup. RF Lucas has obtained patents for this technology in the United States, Japan and Europe, and is now being used in the apparel, manufacturing, and logistics industries.

Asano Tomoyuki said: The company has always been committed to product development and is now considering expanding sales. In addition to expanding the recruitment of sales talents, this financing is also considering the further development of high-value-added functions. Specifically, combining autonomous walking robots and drones to study the function of unmanned reading tags. Up to now, where people use handheld readers to read tags, self-propelled robots can also read and manage at night. This has further promoted the automation and efficiency of inventory management-related tasks. It is reported that this function has been technically verified, and it is planned to be implemented as a product in the future.