Networks of passive radio beacons spanning moderate-sized terrain areas have been proposed to aid navigation of small robotic aircraft that would be used to explore Saturn’s moon Titan. Such networks could also be used on Earth to aid navigation of robotic aircraft, land vehicles, or vessels engaged in exploration or reconnaissance in situations or locations (e.g., underwater locations) in which Global Positioning System (GPS) signals are unreliable or unavailable.

A Robotic Exploratory Aircraft (e.g., a miniature blimp) would transmit a radarlike signal to interrogate passive radio beacons on the ground. The navigation system of the aircraft would store the known locations of the beacons and would utilize the signals returning from the beacons to determine its precise position relative to the network of beacons. The navigation system would also synthesize a navigation map from a combination of the stored beacon location data and from prior and present coarse and fine position estimates.
Prior to use, it would be necessary to pre-position the beacons at known locations that would be determined by use of one or more precise independent global navigation system(s). Thereafter, while navigating over the area spanned by a given network of passive beacons, an exploratory robot would use the beacons to determine its position precisely relative to the known beacon positions (see figure). If it were necessary for the robot to explore multiple, separated terrain areas spanned by different networks of beacons, the robot could use a long-haul, relatively coarse global navigation system for the lower-precision position determination needed during transit between such areas.

The proposed method of precise determination of position of an exploratory robot relative to the positions of passive radio beacons is based partly on the principles of radar and partly on the principles of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags. The robot would transmit radarlike signals that would be modified and reflected by the passive beacons. The distance to each beacon would be determined from the round-trip propagation time and/or round-trip phase shift of the signal returning from that beacon. Signals returned from different beacons could be distinguished by means of their RFID characteristics. Alternatively or in addition, the antenna of each beacon could be designed to radiate in a unique pattern that could be identified by the navigation system. Also, alternatively or in addition, sets of identical beacons could be deployed in unique configurations such that the navigation system could identify their unique combinations of radio-frequency reflections as an alternative to leveraging the uniqueness of the RFID tags.

The degree of dimensional accuracy would depend not only on the locations of the beacons but also on the number of beacon signals received, the number of samples of each signal, the motion of the robot, and the time intervals between samples. At one extreme, a single sample of the return signal from a single beacon could be used to determine the distance from that beacon and hence to determine that the robot is located somewhere on a sphere, the radius of which equals that distance and the center of which lies at the beacon. In a less extreme example, the three-dimensional position of the robot could be determined with fair precision from a single sample of the signal from each of three beacons. In intermediate cases, position estimates could be refined and/or position ambiguities could be resolved by use of supplementary readings of an altimeter and other instruments aboard the robot.

This work was done by Clayton Okino, Andrew Gray, and Esther Jennings of Caltech for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For more information, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. NPO-40042