Multi-Sensor Accurate Forklift Location and Tracking Simulation in Industrial Indoor Environments

Abstract

Location and tracking needs are becoming more prominent in industrial environments nowadays. Process optimization, traceability or safety are some of the topics where a positioning system can operate to improve and increase the productivity of a factory or warehouse. Among the different options, solutions based on ultra-wideband (UWB) have emerged during recent years as a good choice to obtain highly accurate estimations in indoor scenarios. However, the typical harsh wireless channel conditions found inside industrial environments, together with interferences caused by workers and machinery, constitute a challenge for this kind of system. This paper describes a real industrial problem (location and tracking of forklift trucks) that requires precise internal positioning and presents a study on the feasibility of meeting this challenge using UWB technology. To this end, a simulator of this technology was created based on UWB measurements from a set of real sensors. This simulator was used together with a location algorithm and a physical model of the forklift to obtain estimations of position in different scenarios with different obstacles. Together with the simulated UWB sensor, an additional inertial sensor and optical sensor were modeled in order to test its effect on supporting the location based on UWB. All the software created for this work is published under an open-source license and is publicly available.

Environmental Cross-Validation of NLOS Machine Learning Classification/Mitigation with Low-Cost UWB Positioning Systems

“…To do this, since it would be impossible to replicate a configuration of beacons in the ML model-generation scenario in the exactly same way as in the evaluation scenario, it was decided to carry out a simulation-based approach. This simulation is based on the UWB simulator described in [8] and developed by the authors. The simulator is built on the Gazebo simulation platform [33], a multi-platform software consisting of several components and focused on the virtual simulation of real physical environments.…”

“…A comparison was made of the performance of the localization in the evaluation scenario with respect to the same scenario with an ideal situation where UWB measurements taken from the ML model-generation scenario were considered. This was possible thanks to the realistic UWB simulator that the authors developed in [8]. The results of this comparison can be seen in Section 5.2.…”

Planar Sectoral Antenna for IR-UWB Localization With Minimal Range Estimation Biasing

“…A sectoral IR-UWB anchor antenna is designed for IR-UWB localization applications in the [3.2448 − 4.7424] GHz frequency band. Thereby, the antenna covers channels 1 to 4 of the IEEE 802.15.4a-2011 standard, frequently adopted in academic and commercial localization applications [30]- [33]. In the following, all design requirements in the frequency domain are imposed over the entire specified frequency band.…”

A New Dataset of People Flow in an Industrial Site with UWB and Motion Capture Systems

“…Valentín Barral et al [43] developed a realistic software simulation tool. They have also built a UWB simulator based on real scenarios under three different situations: LOS, NLOS soft, and NLOS hard.…”