A bilateral 24 GHz wireless positioning system for 3D real-time localization of people and mobile robots

Due to advances in the field of robotics, service robots have been rapidly gaining popularity over the past 20 years. However, the crucial aspect of indoor mobile-robot localization has remained relatively unexplored. This paper presents a bilateral 24 GHz wireless positioning system with minimum infrastructure for 3D real-time localization of people and mobile robots for indoor service-robot applications. The system consists of a frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) secondary radar fitted with a calibrated 2D sparse antenna array. A 3D spatial matched filter is employed to determine the distance, azimuth and elevation angles to the target. We evaluated the proposed system in a typical indoor scenario, locating a moving person relative to a mobile robot. We determined the root-mean-square errors of the distance, azimuth and elevation angles to 4.03 cm, 0.5° and 0.55°, respectively, confirming the high system reliability and accuracy in an indoor environment.