A 3D Acoustic Local Positioning System to Track a Neutrally Bouyant Flow Follower

The paper describes research into local positioning in a confined space using ultrasonic signal propagation. The work is targeted at the realization of a neutrally buoyant flow follower to be injected into a process vessel. The flow follower emits an ultrasonic signal which is detected by four receivers located on the inside wall of the vessel. Spread spectrum techniques, such as binary phase shift keying, have been borrowed from GPS to explore improvements in noise immunity. Thresholding and correlation techniques have yielded 3D positional accuracy of the order of centimeters in a laboratory-based steel vessel with dimension about lm.

[1]  Klaus-Werner Jörg,et al.  First results in eliminating crosstalk and noise by applying pseudo-random sequences to mobile robot sonar sensing , 1996, Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. IROS '96.

[2]  Gary Bishop,et al.  Whisper: a spread spectrum approach to occlusion in acoustic tracking , 2002 .

[3]  K. Vickery,et al.  Acoustic positioning systems. A practical overview of current systems , 1998, Proceedings of the 1998 Workshop on Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (Cat. No.98CH36290).

[4]  Michael S. Braasch,et al.  GPS receiver architectures and measurements , 1999, Proc. IEEE.

[5]  R. Palmer.  A spread spectrum acoustic ranging system - an overview , 2002, IEEE CCECE2002. Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering. Conference Proceedings (Cat. No.02CH37373).

[6]  Elliott D. Kaplan.  Understanding GPS : principles and applications , 1996 .

[7]  Michael J. Hounslow,et al.  The ‘Smart’ Sphere: Experimental Results , 2005 .

[8]  Hugh F. Durrant-Whyte,et al.  Inertial navigation systems for mobile robots , 1995, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[9]  K.-W. Jorg,et al.  First results in eliminating crosstalk and noise by applying pseudo-random sequences to mobile robot sonar sensing , 1996, Proceedings of the First Euromicro Workshop on Advanced Mobile Robots (EUROBOT '96).

[10]  T. C. Austin,et al.  The application of spread spectrum signaling techniques to underwater acoustic navigation , 1994, Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Technology (AUV'94).

[11]  Deborah Estrin,et al.  Robust range estimation using acoustic and multimodal sensing , 2001, Proceedings 2001 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Expanding the Societal Role of Robotics in the the Next Millennium (Cat. No.01CH37180).