MineGPS: Battery-Free Localization Base Station for Coal Mine Environment

Rescue robot self-positioning is a significant challenging technology in coal mine rescue. Towards this end, we propose a localization system with unique low-cost battery-free base stations for underground rescue robots, called MineGPS. The main idea is to design the battery-free base station with a unique arrangement sequence of reflective tags, and make robots identify each base station with computer vision-related technology to determine which base station it is near. In particular, inspired by Hamming code, we introduce a detection mechanism to correct the base station identification errors caused by dust covering in the mine. Finally, we present a robot localization algorithm by utilizing the location information of the base station. We implement MineGPS and evaluate its performance extensively. Results show that MineGPS can achieve the positioning accuracy with a median error of 15 cm. It is believed that MineGPS has a high potential to provide a low-cost and effective solution for the precise positioning of rescue robots in complex underground environments.