Many animals exploit polarized light in order to calibrate their magnetic compasses for navigation. For example, some birds are equipped with biological magnetic and celestial compasses enabling them to migrate between the Western and Eastern Hemispheres. The Vikings' ability to derive true direction from polarized light is also widely accepted. However, their amazing navigational capabilities are still not completely clear. Inspired by birds' and Vikings' ancient navigational skills. Here we present a combined real-time position method based on the use of polarized light and geomagnetic field. The new method works independently of any artificial signal source with no accumulation of errors and can obtain the position and the orientation directly. The novel device simply consists of two polarized light sensors, a 3-axis compass and a computer. The field experiments demonstrate device performance.
Orientation and position information are indispen~able in mobile robot navigation. In this paper, a novel polarization sensor for getting orientation information is introduced. It exports an absolute azimuth angle. To take it effect in mobile robot navigation, a fuzzy logic controller is designed. It can direct the robot walking along the designed trajectory according to the information from the polarization sensor. Assisted by the wheel encoders, some navigation experiments are implemented outdoors. The result indicates that the error of the polarizatioñ ensor is independent of the travel distance and it can play an Important role in automatic navigation system in a further way.
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.