Services robots navigating on smart floors

Abstract

We describe an approach to position estimation for mobile service robots and automatically guided vehicles which is based on RFID technology. The core idea of the approach is to structure the work space by means of a Smart Floor in a manner which enables and supports reliable navigation and positioning with absolute accuracy over large distances. The "intelligence" of the floor is in a dense, area-wide network of thousands of RFID transponder, which are mounted underneath the regular floor covering and quasi serve as radio beacons. The navigation system described in this paper, has been presented at CeBIT 2006 in Hannover by invitation of the German Ministry of Education and Research. InMach Intelligente Maschinen has further received the Walter Reis Innovation Award for Service Robotics for this innovative solution. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.