HVLP: Hybrid visible light positioning of a mobile robot

In recent years energy efficient LEDs have become a commonplace lighting solution. It is possible to create an indoor positioning system (IPS) from existing lighting infrastructure by making minor modifications to the luminaire drivers. In this paper we develop and implement an IPS by augmenting the luminaires with collocated Zigbee radios. The Hybrid Visible Light Positioning (HVLP) system utilizes a two-stage process where it first localizes which room a mobile robot resides in, followed by estimating the robot's position within the room itself. Experimental results conducted in two adjacent rooms with dimensions 4.8 × 5.7 × 2.5, 4.8 × 3.3 × 2.5 show that the HVLP system attains a median error of 5.8 cm, which is a significant improvement on existing approaches.