Self-correcting Adaptive Tracking System

The benefits of Global Positioning System (GPS) are recognized in numerous military as well as civilian applications. In many situations, however, GPS signals are simply not available or, at best, intermittently observable. This paper describes a novel location tracking system, called self-correcting adaptive tracking system (SATS), which focuses on solving group location problem when GPS is not available. In our location tracking system, we use a tracking mechanism that allows locating group members based on their pair wise distance information. A key innovation of SATS is that we use an adaptive search algorithm to find the new position estimate based on constraints given by the ranged data. In addition, our location tracking system is capable of extracting directional information normally unavailable in ranging system, which allows us to adaptively stabilize the orientation of the group. The SATS methodology has been prototyped and tested as part of an Office of Navy Research (ONR) program.