A Flexible 3D-Printed UHF RFID Tag for Worker-Safety Applications

Abstract

This paper presents a flexible, 3D-printed, passive UHF RFID tag, specifically designed to be applied on the safety vest of a worker to allow its identification. Usually, conventional in-lay tags, are not easily exploitable for this purpose, because they are particularly sensitive to the proximity of the human tissue, which perturbates their performance. For this reason, a flexible, thick, and low lossy substrate has been realized using a TPE filament suitable for 3D printing so to separate the antenna from the human body, while maintaining an acceptable level of comfort. The conductive parts have been realized using a conductive and adhesive nylon-based fabric from Adafruit™, which has been purposely shaped through a Graphtech ™ CE6000 cutting plotter. This tag has been conceived to be part of a smart tracking system developed within the SMARTGRID project, in collaboration with INAIL (Italian National Institute for the prevention of accidents at work).