Global Positioning System Reference
In-Depth Information
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Improved Inertial/Odometry/GPS
Positioning of Wheeled Robots Even in
GPS-Denied Environments
Eric North
1
, Jacques Georgy
2
, Umar Iqbal
3
, Mohammed Tarbochi
4
and Aboelmagd Noureldin
5
1
Canadian Forces Aerospace and Telecommunications Engineering Support Squadron
2
Trusted Positioning Inc.
3
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Queen's University
4
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Royal Military College
5
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Royal Military College/Queen's
University
Canada
1. Introduction
As described by Pacis et al (Pacis et al., 2004) the control strategy from a navigational
viewpoint used in a mobile platform ranges from tele-operated to autonomous. A
tele-operated platform is a platform having no on-board intelligence and whose navigation
is guided in real-time by a remote human operator. An autonomous platform is one that
takes its own decisions using onboard sensors and processor. According to Pacis et al (Pacis
et al., 2005) for autonomous mobile robot navigation the problems that must be dealt with are
localization, path planning, obstacle avoidance and map building. The focus of this work is
in the localization problem.
Localization is the problem of estimating robot's pose relative to its environment from
sensor observations. Localization is a necessity for successful mobile robot systems, it
has been referred to as "the most fundamental problem to providing a mobile robot with
autonomous capabilities" (Cox, 1991). Furthermore, as confirmed in (Pacis et al., 2004) to
achieve autonomous navigation the robot must maintain an accurate knowledge of its position
and orientation. Successful achievement of all other navigation tasks depends on the robot's
ability to know its position and orientation accurately. According to a review by Borenstein
et al (Borenstein et al., 1997) of mobile robot positioning technologies, positioning systems are
divided into seven categories falling in two groups. They classified the positioning techniques
as: relative position measurement and absolute position measurement. The former includes
odometry and inertial navigation while the latter includes magnetic compass, active beacons,
global positioning system (GPS), landmark navigation and map-based positioning.
An unprecedented surge of developments in mobile robot outdoor navigation was witnessed
after the US government removed selective availability (SA) of GPS. Examples of applications
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