Investigating Ultra-Wideband Location Positioning as a Guidance System for Mobile Robotics

Introduction Location systems can be divided into two types. There are outdoor and indoor location systems. The overall principle upon which these systems operate is to locate an object accurately. There are various types of location systems some wireless, others based on Video imaging and digital location systems but they all have their advantages and disadvantages. Outdoor location systems are costly to implement. The infrastructure required for these types of systems include satellites and receivers. Their performance can be affected by weather conditions and other atmospheric conditions and the accuracy which they deliver is not as accurate as that of indoor location systems. Indoor location devices still have some problems such as the ability to locate objects exactly. This can be caused by a number of factors depending on the system being used. Each system has its advantages and its disadvantages. Some can provide a high degree of accuracy but are not suitable for manufacturing applications as they do not perform well in these conditions due in part to interference caused by other machinery. The cost of some of these systems is also a factor as they can be very expensive to implement. Scalability is another issue that requires investigation. However in order to evaluate these systems we must look at how the different systems operate. The benefits of being able to track objects accurately cannot be underestimated. Industry has longed to be able to effectively track objects, components, assets and people. Ultra Wide Band technologies are often described as the next generation of real time location positioning systems. In the world today industry is becoming more competitive and any technology which can provide a competitive edge is welcomed and much sought after. However not all technologies live up to their claims which can prove very costly to industry. Therefore this research investigates the use of a real time indoor positioning system to guide robots in performing various tasks. The aim is to evaluate and test the accuracy, precision and robustness of a location detection system in a small geographical area in order to ascertain how beneficial an indoor UWB location detection system could be in the field of robotics and how industry could benefit from this technology [1]. The adoption of radio frequency is simpler than face-recognition using vision, guarantees a higher success rate and allows the identification of each robot regardless of its morphology. There might be similar robots of the same shape or colour. As wireless networks have become omnipresent, we plan to examine positioning solutions that would allow robots to locate themselves by listening for radio beacons such as 802.11 access points. Location Positioning Indoor location systems are required to provide more accurate location detection than outdoor systems and they often have to work in harsher environments. Often RF signals are interfered with because of electromagnetic discharge from other sources. Therefore indoor location systems still have problems to overcome regarding the accuracy location detection. Ultrawideband employs sonic detection methods that help overcome many of the difficulties that other indoor location systems suffer from. Ultra-wideband location detection systems combine sensors and transmitting tags to provide coverage of an area referred to as intelligent space which is where accurate information can be obtained about location of objects. Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS) track objects in buildings. These may be pre-tagged objects, or discovered objects. Examples of tagged objects are patients or equipment in a hospital. Examples of discovered objects are people in burning buildings or soldiers on a battlefield. An IPS uses other radio technology, infrared, or Elixir Adv. Engg. Info. 36 (2011) 3504-3510