Multisensor Robot Navigation Systems

Almost all robot navigation systems work indoors. Outdoor robot navigation systems offer the potential for new application areas. The biggest single obstacle to building effective robot navigation systems is the lack of accurate wide-area sensors for trackers that report the locations and orientations of objects in an environment. Active (sensor-emitter) tracking technologies require powered-device installation, limiting their use to prepared areas that are relative free of natural or man-made interference sources. The hybrid tracker combines rate gyros and accelerometers with compass and tilt orientation sensor and DGPS system. Sensor distortions, delays and drift required compensation to achieve good results. The measurements from sensors are fused together to compensate for each other's limitations. Analysis and experimental results demonstrate the system effectiveness. The paper presents a field experiment for a low-cost strapdown-IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit)/DGPS combination, with data processing for the determination of 2-D components of position (trajectory), velocity and heading. In the present approach we have neglected earth rotation and gravity variations, because of the poor gyroscope sensitivities of our low-cost ISA (Inertial Sensor Assembly) and because of the relatively small area of the trajectory. The scope of this experiment was to test the feasibility of an integrated DGPS/IMU system of this type and to develop a field evaluation procedure for such a combination.