Robotic follower system using bearing-only tracking with directional antennas

Abstract

This paper presents the development of a robotic follower system with the eventual goal of autonomous convoying to create endto- end communication. The core of the system is a bearing-only tracking with directional antennas and an obstacle avoidance algorithm with sonar sensors. For bearing estimation with directional antennas, we employ a Weighted Centroid Algorithm (WCA), which is a method for active antenna tracking and Direction Of Arrival (DOA) estimation. We also discuss the use of sonar sensors that can detect objects, which could improve our robotic follower system in mobile robot navigation. Through extensive field experiments in different environments, we show feasibilities of our proposed system, allowing a follower robot to track a leader robot effectively in convoying fashion. We expect that our system can be applied in a variety of applications that need autonomous convoying.