evaluating sensor technologies for gate-based object counting in an internet of things set-up

The increased computational power of modern embedded devices with the widespread development of Internet infrastructure has brought the Internet of Things (IoT) era closest than ever. Recent market researches indicate that IoT product and relevant service suppliers will generate revenue exceeding $300 billion and the interconnected devices will grow to 26 billion [1, 2]. One field that can be benefited from the common advantages of IoT systems, (real time monitoring, large scale deployment etc.) is the Logistics area. In this paper we investigate a common problem in the logistics which is the automating object counting. We concentrate on uniform, disposable products stored on a pile, queue or a stack (e.g., a shelf) and examine a number of different technologies for sensing input and output through a gate to the storage area and how we can integrate them in an IoT environment. We define a set of comparison criteria with practical flavor in order to examine and evaluate twelve different types of sensors 3. The intention for our study is to form a baseline for anyone needing to implement gate-based input/output control.