Wheelchairs Embedded Control System Design for Secure Navigation With RF Signal Triangulation

Abstract

In the mobile robotic systems a precise estimate of the robot pose (Cartesian [x y] position plus orientation angle θ) with the intention of the path planning optimization is essential for the correct performance, on the part of the robots, for tasks that are destined to it, especially when intention is for mobile robot autonomous navigation. This work uses a ToF (Time-of-Flight) of the RF digital signal interacting with beacons for computational triangulation in the way to provide a pose estimative at bi-dimensional indoor environment, where GPS system is out of range. It's a new technology utilization making good use of old ultrasonic ToF methodology that takes advantage of high performance multicore DSP processors to calculate ToF of the order about ns. A mobile robot platform with differential drive and nonholonomic constraints is used as base for state space, plants and measurements models that are used in the simulations and for validation the experiments. After being tested and validated in the simulator, the control system is programmed in the control board memory of the mobile robot or wheelchair. Thus, the use of material is optimized, firstly validating the entire model virtually and afterwards operating the physical implementation of the navigation system.