RFID Technology for Mobile Robot Surveillance

Abstract

We introduced two novel methods to estimate the location of passive RFID tags using a surveillance mobile robot equipped with RF reader and antennas, and a laser rangefinder. Both approaches are based on fuzzy logic and use a fuzzy model of the RFID system. The first method, referred to as Fuzzy Tag Localization (FTL), allows us to accurately localize tags with respect to the robot. The positions of the tags in a map of the environment are also estimated, using a laser-based SLAM approach to globally localize the robot in the environment. That leads to what is called an RFID-augmented map. The second method, named Fuzzy Tag Bearing Estimation (FTBE), aims at estimating the bearing of a tag relative to the mobile robot. It can be used when an approximate knowledge about the tag location is needed, or only the bearing information is required, such as in some robot localization methods. Experimental tests performed in a real indoor environment were presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of both methods. It was shown that fuzzy logic is appropriate in knowledge representation under uncertainty in RFID systems for mobile robotics applications like environment exploration and mapping.