Starlite: a new artificial landmark for the navigation of mobile robots

Abstract ⎯ In this paper, we describe a new localization sensor suite for the development of a location sensing network. The sensor suite comprises wirelessly controlled infrared beacons and an image sensor which detects the pixel positions of infrared sources. We describe the operating principles of the developed sensor suite and report the performance for mobile robot localization. The advantage of the developed sensor suite lies in its robustness and low cost to obtain localization information as well as simplicity of deployment to build a robotic location sensing network. Experimental results show that the developed sensor suite outperforms the state-of-the-art localization sensor