UWB based indoor localization Module

Main functionalities

To introduce mobile manipulators in industrial settings localization capabilities need to be added. We use localization based on the Ultra Wide Band (UWB) to facilitate deployment of mobile robots in collaborative work cell for assembly of product variants.

Technical specifications

The Ultra Wide Band module uses firstly the ranging hardware which is the Decawave TREK1000 evaluation kit containing four evaluation boards and antennas. For two-dimensional ranging the minimum advised number of anchors is four. To obtain heading information the ranges of two tags will be fused in the Localization Processing Unit, which can be e.g. a PC or single-board computer like Raspberry PI3. Each of the evaluation boards has online visualization and (re)programming capabilities. The interface to the evaluation boards is always over USB.

Inputs and outputs

The requirements for the ultra wide band module will be split into the next main sections:
1. Firmware for the TREK1000 evaluation boards.
2. ROS Kinetic based localization for Ubuntu LTS16.04.

Supporting tools for visualization and configuration of the firmware on the evaluation boards.
The TREK1000 evaluation boards will be flashed with optimized firmware compared to Decawave COTS firmware. The dipswitch on these boards will be read as initial configuration e.g. tag or anchor. These configurations can be altered using supporting tools described later. Within the Localization Processing Unit, the actual ranging data is read over USB from each tag’s firmware API and published as a self-defined message on a ROS topic by USB2topic submodule. The USB2topic submodule publishes its ranges from each of the anchor configured evaluation boards. The Localization submodule subscribes to these ROS topics and publishes the two-dimensional position (X, Y) and orientation.

Supporting tools will be provided to:
1. Flash firmware to the TREK1000 evaluation boards.
2. Calibration of different antenna configurations.
3. (Re)program UWB firmware
4. Anchor placement tool using Dilution-of-precision (DOP) analysis.

Formats and standards

LTS16.04,
IEEE802.15

Training material

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Owner (organization)

Flanders Make

Documents

Trainings

To learn more about the solution, click on the link below to access the training on the Moodle platform
UWB based indoor localization