Advanced Ubiquitous Positioning for a Poultry Robot: Integrating INS/GNSS/UWB with SLAM Approach

This study proposes an innovative approach to enhance the autonomous navigation accuracy of robots in poultry farms. It combines multiple positioning technologies, including the inertial navigation system (INS), real-time kinematic global navigation satellite system (RTK-GNSS), ultra-wideband (UWB) positioning, and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), utilizing the extended Kalman filter (EKF) for integration. Besides, a novel weighted method is proposed for merging sensor fusion-based positioning with RTK-GNSS to maintain high accuracy, even in the absence of RTK-GNSS signals. Designed to operate within the robot operating system framework, the efficacy of the proposed system is evaluated in a simulated poultry farm environment. Experimental results reveal that proposed scheme significantly reduces the average positioning error to below 34 cm, offering a robust solution in GNSS-denied areas.