A precise Indoor Ultrasonic Positioning & Navigation System, with wireless time-syncing using RF Radio waves.

Source Codes & Description (Github page): https://github.com/svdeepak99/RIUP
Link to my LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/svdeepak99/

I am Deepak S V, pursuing Electrical and Electronics Engineering course in NIT Trichy, India. I did this project while I was in my 1st year from the month of May’18 to July’18.

Project Description:

This project aims to achieve indoor positioning and navigation, employing Time of Flight (TOF) measurements using Ultrasonic Transmitter and Receiver Modules.

The setup would consist of a Transmission Station, whose operation is similar to the GPS Satellites orbiting on the Geostationary Orbits above the Earth’s Surface. Then there will be a mobile Receiver Station, similar to any GPS Device on the Earth’s Surface, which would obtain signals from the GPS Satellites and estimate its own position through trilateration.

However, unlike GPS Satellites, the Transmission Station would have ultrasound transmitters that would continually transmit ultrasonic pulses, which would then be captured by the Receiver Station, for TOF measurements. Likewise, the Receiver Stations would posses Ultrasound receiver modules, unlike conventional GPS Devices. In addition to these, the Transmitter Station would have a 433MHz Radio Frequency (RF) transmitter module, and the Receiver Station would have a 433MHz RF receiver module. These RF transducers serve the role of syncing the clock between the transmitter and receiver stations, in order to perform the TOF measurements on the Ultrasound signals. This is done since radio signals travel a lot faster than ultrasound signals. Hence, it can be used to instantly start the TOF clock on the receiver station when the transmitter station beams an ultrasonic pulse.

The microcontroller boards used throughout the project is an Arduino UNO board for the transmitter station and another Arduino UNO board for the receiver station. I wrote the firmware entirely in Embedded C to make full use of the hardware and improve the execution speeds to handle time-sensitive operations such as TOF measurements, time syncing using RF Signals, trilaterations and navigations simultaneously on the same board. This also reduced the cost of the required hardware, by a significant margin.

Components Used:
1) 2 x Arduino UNO R3 Boards: https://store.arduino.cc/usa/arduino-uno-rev3
2) 4 x US-100 Ultrasonic Distance Sensor Module: https://robu.in/product/us-100-ultrasonic-sensor-distance-measuring-module-temperature-compensation/
3) 1 x 433MHz Transmitter & Receiver Modules: https://www.amazon.in/Robocraze-Wireless-Transmitter-Receiver-Quadcopter/dp/B07MY67BDB/
4) 1 x L298N Motor Driver Module: https://robu.in/product/l298n-2a-based-motor-driver-module-good-quality/
5) 1 x HC-05 Bluetooth Module: https://www.amazon.in/xcluma-Wireless-Bluetooth-Transceiver-Arduino/dp/B071HWFYJP/

Thanks for watching & have a nice day.

, https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mW9np-8fmzY/hqdefault.jpg

source

7 Comments

  1. What a cool project. A combination of high tech and MacGyver-ism, (You're too young to know about MacGyver but look it up.)

  2. This is really clever. How are you computing distance? Are both transmitting ultrasonic sensors sending a simultaneous ping with the receiving ultrasonic sensor determining the difference in ping and adding its estimate to the origin or is there a radio module which synchronizes the ping?

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