Experimental Platform for Sensor Fusion Positioning Methods Evaluation

Abstract

Position and context awareness is becoming greater in importance as one of the key enablers of the Industry 4.0 concept, with impact on analysis and optimizing production processes, their direct control, increasing and ensuring the safety of personnel and technology, as well as enabling traceability of products. There are many approaches to achieve a real-time location system (RTLS) capable of providing positioning data, yet each approach usually has its limits given by the physical principles of technology which it is primarily based on; mostly a wireless signal transmission where the performance boundaries lay in non-line-of-sight (nLoS) scenarios. Current literature already presents various approaches capable of dealing with these shortcomings and presents various combinations of sensors based on different phenomena, the drawbacks of which are mutually compensated, known as sensor fusion. This work presents practical design of a compact platform, which utilizes Ultra-WideBand (UWB) as one of the predominant wireless technologies for wireless positioning with with IEEE 802.15.4z compliant radio integrated circuits in cooperation with a 9-axis absolute orientation sensor, expandable with add-on boards.