Object localization strategy for a mobile robot using RFID

One of the challenging issues in robotics is to give robots the ability to navigate itself in unknown environment without human help. In this thesis, we explored and evaluated object localization method for a mobile robot using radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. The workplace included objects with RFID tags, a mobile robot with dual antenna RFID reader and obstacles: chairs, tables and a human. Using RFID reader, we were able to have the mobile robot communicate with the RFID tag to navigate the tagged object. This research employed the following methods for navigating a mobile robot and locating objects. First, a mobile robot was implemented as Braitenberg vehicle. It used the received signal strength of the RFID tag to compute instantaneously and produce movement of the wheel and generate suitable motion in order to navigate the object. Second, a mobile robot with directional antenna that collects data about relative direction of the interested RFID tag in its local coordinate system and computes tag positions by taking several measurements for different positions of the robot. Our experiment results showed that proposed RFID system can locate an object and can track the movement of a target object in real time. To verify effectiveness of the system we performed several experiments in the workplace