We are proud to announce another invention that addresses the unique needs of rural and agricultural communities—Gate Watch, a revolutionary new product that automatically detects whether a gate is open or closed and sends an alert via the Roper® app.
“We wanted a solution that was weatherproof, lightweight and works with all types of gates,” said inventor and CEO Maeve Garigan during recent remarks. “On the ranch you might have a wood gate or a metal gate, and you might use a chain or rope to keep it shut. What makes Gate Watch really unique is that it works for all types of gates and retentions, and the gate can move back and forth within its retention without being registered as ‘open’.”
“A lot can go wrong very quickly if a gate is open when it shouldn’t be. Maintaining effective fencing is critical to avoiding costly losses and legal disputes.”
“Gate Watch is an important step in our Roper® Smart Ranch concept,” she continued. “This involves a variety of devices, such as the Roper® tag and Gate Watch, which ride on the private and secure Roper® network with location and status information mapped out in the Roper® app. This gives the ranch manager and their team a single, up-to-date ‘picture’ of cattle location alongside the status of key infrastructure—a real game changer for managing time and priorities. Right now, folks are relying on guess work and time-consuming routines. We are revolutionizing that and improving their bottom line by saving time and reducing losses."
"Putting together the Roper® Smart Ranch has been a ton of work and I am very proud of our team and their commitment to our vision and shared values of integrity, service, teamwork, and the constant pursuit of
excellence."
How it Works
Gate Watch uses an advanced, laser-based ranging sensor to "watch" the gate from inside a weatherproof housing. When the gate moves outside of the sensor's field of view, it registers as "open" and automatically sends a notification via the Roper® mobile app. The sensor hardware can also be reprogrammed to perform other presence detection functions, such as counting the number of vehicles passing through a gate and their direction of travel.
"Our approach to sensor design maximizes capability within a very small and rugged package. This creates valuable options and tremendous flexibility, especially considering that we can reprogram our sensors remotely using our secure network and change sensor behavior", explained Ms. Garigan.
Gate Watch also serves as a node in the private and secure Roper® network so it can relay information from the Roper® tags, effectively extending the range of the Roper® tags over 3 miles.
Below are figures from our recent patent filing that illustrate the installed Gate Watch, and a top view showing the allowable "slop" before a gate is detected as being open.
Building the First Prototype
Gate Watch was prototyped by a student design team from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, an elite engineering school based in Terre Haute, IN that is ranked #1 in Undergraduate Engineering Programs by US News & World Reports.
“Supporting the next generation of engineers is a tremendously rewarding experience and is one of the ways that we pay in forward,” explained Ms. Garigan. “The students at Rose Hulman are second-to-none and it was a real pleasure working with this highly talented team to bring my vision to life. I have no doubt that they will go on and do great things in their careers.”
The student team members, who are also named inventors on the Gate Watch patent, are profiled below.
Brett-Russell Huizinga. Computer Engineering, 2021. Brett was President of Sigma Nu Beta Upsilon and served as Lead Developer for the creation of TrackMatic, a software solution for Midwest track builders. Brett is currently working in Test Avionics at Collins Aerospace.
Jonathan Lucas Wampler. Electrical Engineering, 2021. Jonathan is experienced with developing detection and tracking algorithms, and developing manufacturing processes. His volunteer work focuses on fixing medical equipment in low-income countries.
Alexander Phillip Mazany. Electrical Engineering, 2021. Alex is focused on the field of power electronics and worked on driver monitoring systems for Veoneer. He currently works at Texas Instruments in the high-voltage power department.
Jason David Duncan. Computer Engineering with a minor in Mathematics, 2021. Jason’s work has focused on computer architecture and software design. He is experienced with Java and C development. Jason is currently a Software Engineer at Revature.
The faculty advisor for the prototyping project was Dr. Deborah Walter, an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Her areas of expertise include design, and medical imaging. She started college at the University of Maryland (UMD) in College Park. After receiving her PhD at the Pennsylvania State University, she went to work for GE at the Global Research Center. She was in the Computed Tomography laboratory where she helped to design new x-ray CT systems for medical diagnostic and industrial inspection applications. She is a named inventor on 12 patents related to x-ray CT and helped found the Rose Building Undergraduate Diversity (ROSE-BUD) program. She is keenly interested in the design of medical technologies for low-resource settings.