Guiding Robots Through Wireless Location Positioning

Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS) track objects in buildings. Examples of tagged objects are patients or equipment in a hospital whilst discovered objects could be people in burning buildings or soldiers on a battlefield. Ultra Wide Band (UWB) location determination aims at delivering high positional accuracy in harsh industrial environments that cause problems for traditional systems due to electromagnetic interference. UWB systems can calculate the location of tags which are designed to be mounted on assets or worn by a person. They transmit UWB signals that are received by sensors which contain an array of antenna and ultra-wideband radio receivers. The data from these sensors combined with dedicated software uses algorithms to work out the angle of arrival (AOA) of the UWB signal from the tag which is then compared to the time difference of arrival (TDOA). The robotics industry can benefit from advanced location detection systems. We examine here the use of ultra wide band technology in tracking items such as mobile robots.