Title:
Finding and Navigating to Household Objects with UHF RFID Tags by Optimizing RF Signal Strength
Finding and Navigating to Household Objects with UHF RFID Tags by Optimizing RF Signal Strength
Author(s)
Deyle, Travis
Reynolds, Matthew S.
Kemp, Charles C.
Reynolds, Matthew S.
Kemp, Charles C.
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Abstract
We address the challenge of finding and navigating
to an object with an attached ultra-high frequency radio-
frequency identification (UHF RFID) tag. With current off-the-
shelf technology, one can affix inexpensive self-adhesive UHF
RFID tags to hundreds of objects, thereby enabling a robot
to sense the RF signal strength it receives from each uniquely
identified object. The received signal strength indicator (RSSI)
associated with a tagged object varies widely and depends
on many factors, including the object’s pose, material prop-
erties and surroundings. This complexity creates challenges for
methods that attempt to explicitly estimate the object’s pose.
We present an alternative approach that formulates finding
and navigating to a tagged object as an optimization problem
where the robot must find a pose of a directional antenna
that maximizes the RSSI associated with the target tag. We
then present three autonomous robot behaviors that together
perform this optimization by combining global and local search.
The first behavior uses sparse sampling of RSSI across the
entire environment to move the robot to a location near the
tag; the second samples RSSI over orientation to point the robot
toward the tag; and the third samples RSSI from two antennas
pointing in different directions to enable the robot to approach
the tag. We justify our formulation using the radar equation
and associated literature. We also demonstrate that it has good
performance in practice via tests with a PR2 robot from Willow
Garage in a house with a variety of tagged household objects.
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Date Issued
2014-09
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