DGPS for outdoor mobile Robots by a wireless LAN

With the cancellation of SA in 2000, the precision of GPS has been improved, widening the field of GPS applications. This range of applications includes the measurement of the position of mobile robots. Because the precision of point positioning by GPS is approximately 22mCEP, positioning such objects as automatically controlled oil tankers can be done with good results. However in the case of mobile robots the size of a human, point positioning does not provide enough precision. But with a differential system, utilization involves obtaining information through radio networks, and international agreements written into law determine the radio frequencies that are permitted for use by citizens. For that reason the selection of radio equipment is a very difficult problem for DGPS. In Japan one radio system attracting attention recently is the wireless LAN System, using IEEE802.11b. It is on the 2.4 GHz band, which is available without license, and functions on TCP/IP protocol. This report describes the experimental results of position measurement for a mobile robot using a wireless LAN to send data from a reference station to the robot. We examined what radio transmissions could be used effectively by the LAN.