Improved Ultrasonic Satellite System for the Localization of Mobile Robots

Abstract

The localization of mobile robot in environment is a major concern in mobile robot navigation. So, many kinds of localization techniques have been researched for several years. Among them, the positioning system using ultrasound has received attention. Most of these ultrasonic positioning systems to synchronize the transmitters and receivers are used for RF (Radio Frequencies). However, due to the use of RF, the interference problems can not be avoided and the performance of radio frequencies directly affects the positioning performance. So we proposed the ultrasonic positioning system without synchronizing RF. The proposed system is based on existing USAT (Ultrasonic Satellite System) adopted infrastructure transmitting type, and consists of transmitter and receiver synchronizing modules instead of the radio frequency transmitters and receiver. The ultrasonic transmitters and receivers are synchronized individually by the transmitter and receiver synchronizing modules. In order to calculate the bias between the transmitter and receiver synchronizing modules, new positioning algorithm similar to GPS was proposed. The positioning performance of the improved USAT without synchronizing RF and the validity of the proposed positioning algorithm are verified and evaluated by experiments.