Years of intelligent container research

Abstract

Food losses in the cool chain, which are mostly caused by temperature deviations, can be reduced by remote monitoring of transport conditions. The project 'Intelligent Container' was begun 15 years ago to provide the necessary sensor system, communication and automated evaluation of data. If transport and delivery planning are adjusted according to the actual quality or the predicted remaining shelf life, more products arrive with sufficient quality at the customers. This paper summarizes the project results and highlights current trends in industrial application and research, such as commercial remote container monitoring and standards for data exchange, sub-GHz communication, the increasing availability of biological and computational fluid dynamics models and digital twins. Open research topics include the development of specialized sensors. To overcome obstacles hindering the industrial application of sensor quality monitoring, we suggest a gradual approach, with lower company resources required for the first action points. Food losses can be reduced, even if the complete system, including permanent remote access and adaptive stock rotation, is not applied.