Study on cooperative positioning system: optimum moving strategies for CPS-III

This paper proposes a new method called "cooperative positioning system" (CPS) for mobile robots position identification. The main concept of CPS is to divide the robots into two groups, A and B respectively Group A remains stationary and acts as a landmark while group B is moving; group B then stops and acts as a landmark for group A. This process is repeated until the target position is reached. Compared with dead reckoning, CPS has a far lower accumulation of positioning error, and can also work in three-dimensions. Furthermore, CPS employs inherent landmarks and therefore can be used in uncharted environments unlike the landmark method. This paper focuses on the the relationship between moving configurations of CPS and its positioning accuracy for the latest prototype CPS model, CPS-III, using simulation and analytical techniques. Optimum moving strategies in order to minimize the positioning error are then discussed and verified through experiments.