Position at Response: A Novel Highly Accurate and Low Cost Laser Positioning System

Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are widely used in many navigational applications such as vehicles, aircraft, and ships to find their speed and position. However, the main drawback of GPS is reliability, especially in an urban environment. Tall buildings reflect the signal and can make the receiver’s location appear 10 m or more from its actual position. This paper details a low-cost system designed to overcome this accuracy problem. The proposed system, termed as Position at Response (PaR), utilizes a laser and a network of transponders to locate the vehicle position more accurately than a GPS. The system can work for an indoor application as well. It is easily adaptable to new routes, paths, or destinations. Our preliminary test results show an accuracy within three percent, relative to the distance of the transponders.