UWB-based Tracking of Autonomous Vehicles with Multiple Receivers

In this paper, we consider real-time tracking of an Autonomous Guided Vehicle (AGV) in an indoor industrial scenario. An on-board odometer provides information about the dynamic state of the AGV, allowing to predict its pose (position and orientation). At the same time, an external Ultra Wide Band (UWB) wireless network provides the information necessary to compensate the error drift accumulated by the odometer. Two novel alternative solutions for real-time tracking are proposed: (i) a classical Time Differences of Arrivals (TDOA) approach with a single receiver; (ii) a “Twin-receiver” TDOA (TTDOA) approach, that requires the presence of two independent receivers on the AGV. The performance of the two proposed algorithms is evaluated in realistic conditions. The obtained results clearly show the tradeoff existing between the frequency of UWB measurements and their quality.