BlackBerry has unveiled ‘Radar’, a new end-to-end asset tracking system for trucking companies and private fleet operators.

Announced at the 2016 Mid-America Trucking Show, Radar provides real-time information such as trailer location, open/close state of the container, crossings of pre-defined geofence borders, temperature, humidity, and presence of cargo through the installation of a self-powered tracking device installed on the trucks themselves.

The encrypted data is then transmitted to a secure online portal, from which various stakeholders can obtain visualised data representations and reports depending on the access defined for them, from either a PC, smartphone or tablet.

Radar also contains an extensible architecture and APIs to help developers create customer applications for the platform, such as proximity notifications for warehouses to prepare for an incoming delivery.

Radar leverages BlackBerry’s IoT platform, which already fuels the company’s play in the automotive space, in which a version of its QNX operating system is used in vehicle ECUs to record faults and control on-board devices such as heating, locks and digital content remotely.

According to BlackBerry, the product is hoped to optimise truck and shipping container utilisation, improve on-time delivery, reduce theft, and generate more revenue per trailer without a significant investment in IT infrastructure.

A number of US trucking companies and private fleet operators are currently undergoing a pilot of the platform, with general availability scheduled for mid-2016.