Study of an Innovative Indoor Robotic Navigation Approach Based on Beacons and PSD

Computer Department, Shanghai Second Polytechnic University, China

Abstract

In this paper, innovative indoor navigation methods have been proposed to meet the challenges in robotic navigation systems. The general positioning methods for robotic navigation include vision-based approaches, WIFI beacons, infrared beacons, ultrasonic beacons, etc. However, the common problem with these methods is their inaccuracy. Especially, improving the precision of robotic positioning mechanisms is the key to indoor navigation systems. This paper proposes an approach that combines the external rotating beacon with an internal rotation of position sensitive devices (PSD) which are installed on the robot. While two infrared beams from an external beacon source are equally projected to both sides of the PSD, the robot‟s position can be calculated precisely. The high performance and accurate results can be achieved by optimizing the rotation aligning time, dividing the working area, and compensating errors with information fusion. In comparison with other generic approaches, this proposed innovative approach requires less computing resources and is easier to implement due to its much lower complexity for the computing algorithms.