L.O.S.T Positioning : Line Of Sight Technologies Positioning of RoboRally Robots

Abstract: RoboRally is a board game where the goal is to drive a small robot from a start position to a goal across a dynamic board with different types of obstacles. The robots in this game aren’t real robots, they are small plastic figures which are moved by hand during the game. Our vision is to research a solution for implementing the game with real robots. In order to do this, precise positioning is key. The purpose of this project was therefore to create a local positioning system that allows a robot to find its position in a defined space and change it on a user command with good precision. The built positioning system is based on the time of flight technique using infrared light and ultrasound. The system uses two transmitters and one receiver to calculate two planar distances which can be converted to a coordinate within the board. To assess the system performance in a RoboRally application a small robot was built and multiple tests conducted. The first result was that a one-dimensional distance calculation using the time of flight technique achieved a mean error of 3,2 mm for distances shorter than 1 m. The next result was that the positioning system achieved a 90 x 70 cm rectangle field of view with an accuracy between 1 and 6 cm within this area. The last result was that the robot was able to move a specified distance with a precision of  ± 1 mm and then verify its position successfully at a rate of 97 %. The final conclusion of the project is that the positioning system is accurate enough for a RoboRally application but needs improvements on its field of view.