Global Ultrasonic System for Autonomous Navigation of Indoor Mobile Robots

In this paper, we propose a global ultrasonic system for the self-localization and autonomous navigation of indoor mobile robots. The ultrasonic sensor is regarded as the most cost-effective ranging system among the possible alternatives, and it is widely used for general purpose, since it requires simple electronic drivers and has relatively high accuracy. The global ultrasonic system presented in this paper consists of four or more ultrasonic generators fixed at reference positions in the global coordinates of an indoor environment and two receivers mounted on the mobile robots. By using the RF (Radio Frequency) modules added to the ultrasonic sensors, the robot is able to control the ultrasonic generation and to obtain the critical distances from the reference positions, which are required in order to localize is position in the global coordinates. A kalman filter algorithm designed for the self-localization using the global ultrasonic system and the experimental results of the autonomous navigation are presented in this paper.