This article focuses on mobile robot convoying along a path travelled by a certain leader carrying the active ultrasonic beacon. The robot is equipped with the three-dimensional receiver array in order to receive both the ultrasonic wave and the RF wave marking the beginning of the measurement cycle. To increase measurement reliability, each receiver contains two independent measurement channels with automatic gain control. The distance measurements are pre-processed in order to identify the artefacts and then either remove them or replace them with the interpolated value. To estimate the position of the beacon in the robot’s local coordinate system, several methods are used, including the least squares method with subsequent exponential smoothing, the linear Kalman filter, the Rauch-Tung-Striebel smoother, the extended Kalman Filter, the unscented Kalman filter, and the particle filter. The experiments were undertaken in order to estimate the estimation method preferable for following the leader’s path.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.