Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Human Robot Following Using Parco UWB RFID Tags and Obstacle Detection

A system developed by Parco Wireless (http://www.parcowireless.com/) was installed at the Washington Hospital Center (WHC) (http://www.imedi.org/docs/references/mr.htm). UWB RFID active tags can be wore by patients, medical staff and robots. The credit card-size tags information can be read at a frequency of up to 30 times a second.

Tracking is achieved based on dynamic calculations between x and y coordinates of a tag located on the human and x and y coordinates of a tag placed on the robot. In order to accompany a person, the robot should estimate the next position of the person in order to move without any delay. The robot calculates the distance and angle required to reach the person. The robot calculates the distance between the robot's and human's actual tag readings.

A video is available here:

http://www.compactech.com/kartoun/videos/Uri_Kartoun_Human_Robot_Following_August_1_2005.wmv

Other robot-related videos:

http://www.compactech.com/kartoun/videos/

Thanks!

Uri.

Great video Uri - loved the cheesy song

Knowing nothing about what you are doing I am still going to ask a question:

At one point the robot moves towards the tag and then adjusts itself by moving back and then decides to adjust again and moves forward. It does this a few times. What is going on here? Is it fluctuations in the signal from the RFID or the algorithm or...?

Thanks,

Blacknad.

Exactly, RFID tag readings are very unstable(accuracy of one foot, but with fluctuations).
The robot keeps averaging the readings which are 4 times per second.
Thanks!
Uri.