Imagine the ability to track a product anywhere in the world with accuracy of within one foot—less than 31 cm. Sounds impossible, but with technology that LocatorX is developing, it can be done. Established in 2014 by Billy Meadow, LocatorX is a new company dedicated to licensing and using solid-state atomic clock technology developed by the nanomaterials lab at the University of Oxford to build what the company calls a Global Resource Locator (GRL). This device—no bigger than the tip of a pencil—can be used with existing smartphones and cellular networks to track a product at any time anywhere in the world within reach of the network.
Not only can this technology reveal the precise location of a product, it can also—in conjunction with hardware-based encryption and blockchain technology—provide a complete record of a product’s travel from its source to the end user. Manufacturers know where their product is and who had it in their possession and for how long, which can practically eliminate the problem of food fraud/theft and ensure food safety along the supply chain.