An Optical Indoor Positioning System for the Mass Market

Oliver Maye, Jan Schaeffner, Michael Maaser

IHP GmbH, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany
{maye|schaeffner|maaser}@ihp-microelectronics.com
We propose the design and implementation of an optical odometry-based positioning system that
is sufficiently precise to fit many popular applications of indoor navigation, such as
autonomously moving robots, shopping cart navigation or the support of elderly and physically
challenged people. More than this, the system is lightweight in the sense that it introduces only a
little extra power- and weight budget to the envisioned target gadget. Finally, it has a low bill of
material, which makes it perfectly well suited for massproduction. Basically, it is about a
modified optical mouse equipped with a compass element and a light barrier, which we
prototyped, tested and qualified for the shopping cart application.
1 Introduction & State of the Art
Lost one's way, unguided in a foreign city - or are you just looking for the mustard in a supermarket.
Positioning and navigation are basic requirements to find one's way. The knowledge of the current
position enables us to coordinate moves, to figure out the fastest, shortest, best way or just to find back
home. Nearly automatically we are determining the current position relying on local knowledge to
alter or correct it. But, what happens in case of unknown regions?
In this matter generations of explorers, researcher and engineers have invented several devices,
sensors and systems. The oldest known one is certainly the magnetic compass the most popular maybe
the Global Positioning System, usually called GPS. Furthermore, there are also celestial navigation,
waypoint navigation, odometry and inertial guidance just to give a short overview.
All these methods and systems were invented and have been developed for outdoor use as navigation
aid to localize and track cars, airplanes, ships and men. However, at least since the idea of autonomous
robots has been gaining more relevance, indoor positioning became also an issue. Not only robots but
also the supply of services, e.g. city guide, museums guide, shopping guide, are imaginable application
ranges. For this reason other technologies have to be developed. Based to the origin some analogous
methods could be deployed, e.g. IrDA beacon, WLAN triangulation or Indoor GPS.
Many potential solutions we can adopt from nature. Biologists e.g. reported that honeybees orientate
with the help of optical odometry [1]. Optical odometry has been a matter of research for years,
already. Fundamentally, one needs something continuously taking pictures, like eyes or a camera, and
a computing unit, e.g. the central nervous system, processing these images. Assuming the picture-
taking device is attached to a body the image processor by subtracting two succeeding images of
each other - can compute the planar vectors of movement for this body. Therefore the two images
must overlap so that many features, which were present in the first, can be re-recognized in the second
one. This of course requires a sufficiently high frame rate of the camera, good optical characteristics
for crisp and sharp images and last but not least effectual illumination.
Campbell, Sukthankar, Nourbakhsh and Pahwa recently described a monocular robot vision system
using a web-cam and a laptop [2]. The proposed system is able to detect rotation and translation and
actively corrects the vehicles motion. Moreover, it detects certain kinds of hazards (precipices and
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obstacles). Despite of the nice results, we consider such systems as being too heavy weight in terms
of net weight, price and energy consumption in order to be mounted on vehicles like shopping carts.
Although they are relevant to the niche application of autonomous robots, we believe these systems
will not influence the mass market of optical navigation.
Santos, Silva and Almeida describe a lightweight system comprised of an analogue compass and an
optical PC mouse [3]. The processing unit is made up of a small PIC microcontroller. The system aids
a Bulldozer IV robot to find a goal and return to its starting point. The main originality of this work
appears to be the use of just an optical PC-mouse in combination with the analogous compass element.
As nothing is reported on modifications of the optical system or mouse, we believe this system will
encounter difficulties with speeds higher than the robots velocity, e.g. shopping at walking speed.
Finally, there is a recent US patent application covering optical mouse odometry, necessary
modifications of the lens and its applications to warehouse navigation, luggage transportation, high-
precision agriculture, pets-tracking and many more [4]. It describes how two optical sensors can be
combined to substitute the compass element and estimate rotation. The drawback of this approach is,
that it imposes additional effort on the image-processing algorithm. So either the sensor chip must be
modified or an extra processing unit combining the results of two sensors must be involved.
2 Design Concepts and Implementation
In contrast to known high-tech and heavyweight propositions with an impertinent power consumption
and finally a prohibitive price we describe a system that is made up of a modified optical mouse, a
compass-element and a magnetic switch/light-barrier/RFID-reader. These parts are not only low cost,
but also low energy and by this, perfectly suited to comprise a cost-effective commercial product for
indoor positioning.
In search of a suitable indoor positioning system we defined a couple of requirements. The first is to
be independent of any infrastructure to simplify the deployment of the system. Further, a system
without an infrastructure is not limited to any spatial boundary or other restrictions, e.g. the line of
sight. In addition, for the envisioned application scenarios and market a low cost device for fast broad
distribution or replacement of defective devices is required.
The optical mouse seems to be the ideal device that combines all fundamental needs. In combination
with an electronic compass element it would be capable of determining its relative position and
heading as well. The standard optical mouse comes with two drawbacks that do not fit our needs in the
envisioned application scenario of e.g. positioning of shopping carts: First, the optical mouse detects
motion to a peak velocity of only 1 m/s. We expect that a maximum speed of 2 m/s or even more will
be required. Second, the sensor of the mouse and its lens are designed to have a distance of about 2
mm between the lens and the surface. For a mouse on the desk this approach is ok, but this is not
feasible for the surface of the floor in supermarkets or airports.
We discovered that the modification of the mouse by just a different lens tailored to the field of
applications would meet the requirements of higher speed over ground and ground clearance. The new
lens corrects the optical path so that it allows a sensor observation height of approximately 5 cm over
ground. It not only changes the focus but also images a bigger area of the surface to the sensor. Since
the sensor detects the translation of two consecutive images, larger areas allow for longer distances to
be covered in the time between two images. That is, the maximum speed that can be detected grows.
The larger area requires more light to be photographed correctly. Consequently, illumination was
corrected accordingly. With the same number of pixels for the larger area the detectable number of
features decreases. Therefore the system may not work on every surface (see Figure 4).
Because the mouse sensor can only detect translation, a device to detect rotation, which will definitely
occur, is needed. We decided this device to be an electronic compass. The compass introduces the
capability of detecting rotation and heading.
To keep the device as low cost as possible we decided to reuse the microcontroller in the mouse and
therefore just to replace the additional input devices of a mouse like the buttons and the wheel. Instead
of the wheel roller, the corresponding ports of the mouses micro controller are connected to a
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compass element made up of a V2Xe magneto-inductive sensor. This part is in charge of detecting
rotation with a resolution of down to 1.
The systematic error of the mouse sensor of about 0.5% and the possibly lacking number of features
may introduce a system-immanent accumulated path error. To correct this error we let the system
synchronize with real-world landmarks. Even though such landmarks constitute an infrastructure those
are not essentially needed. To decrease the accumulated errors we soften the requirement of no
infrastructure. That is, we allow passive, maintenance free landmarks that are easy to deploy, need no
power supply and no network connection. Those passive indicators are mounted at well-known
positions. When detected by the positioning system, the known position is reported resetting the path
error accumulated so far.
The position of the landmarks is known only by the application, which can also do some pre-
processing of the known position. That way it is possible to use landmarks that are not just points but
lines or curves, which can be placed in strategic positions to ensure high probability to get hit by any
path. We differentiate to kinds of landmarks. There are landmarks that can identify themselves, i.e.
RFID tags or barcodes, and those that have no identification capability and can be identified only
implicitly by the application. Such could be magnets or simple optical marks. Magnets are the only
solution that can be sensed without power supply at all. Unfortunately, for the deployment of magnetic
switches the magnet fields must be that strong, that it would also influence the compass element. Even
if the magnetic landmarks are to be detected by more sensitive magnetic field sensors the compass
element is still negatively influenced. As optical landmarks some optical properties must be used that
cannot occur accidentally. We found a solution of simple, optical landmarks that can hardly be
misidentified in the use of optical cat-eye reflector foil adhered onto the ground. Cat-eye reflectors
reflect any ray of light exactly into the direction of the source while the surface mostly follows the
reflection law. If we can emit a pulsed IR-beam in an angle that is not perpendicular to the ground it
will be reflected away from the emitting LED. If the beam hits the cat-eye, it will be reflected back to
the LED respectively the IR-sensor mounted besides the LED (Figure 1). This IR-sensor closes the
circuit like the mouses button switches as soon as the IR-beam hits the cat-eye landmark.
Figure 1 Function principle of the synchronization landmarks
Finally, modifications are made at the micro-controllers firmware to account for the new periphery,
convert data format etc. Data format conversion is necessary due to the increased photographed area
and the use of an electronic compass, which provides a wider range of values than the wheel.
The interface of our odometry device is the USB already introduced by the underlying mouse. At the
USB host side, appropriate modifications of the driver allow collecting and accumulating the acquired
data and provide it to the user application. This driver side processing of the acquired data includes
accumulation of detected translations with respect to the detected rotations. The adapted driver
provides also information about the heading of the device detected by the compass module and
notifications on hitting synchronization landmarks. Beside this notification the driver provides an
interface to reset the position and heading to values provided by the application for correcting
accumulated errors.
IR-LED with IR-Sensor
Ground surface
Cat-eye reflector
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3 Practical Tests and Measurement Results
In an effort to verify the ideas, we prototyped the system described above. As shown in Figure 2, the
resulting test bed consists of three modules. For debugging purposes, they are flexible enough to
operate independently from each other. During normal operation, two 14-pin ribbon cables
interconnect the modules. Also, the synchronization detection module is then flipped to have the
optical elements working towards the ground.
Fig. 2 The test bed featuring the synchronization detection module, the compass module and
the mouse module (from left to right)
As mouse sensor we use Agilents ADNS-2051 (Figure 3). It is controlled by the Cypress
CY7C63723A microcontroller featuring an up-link USB interface. The lens is mounted right onto the
sensor chip and allows a distance of approx. 5 cm to the ground. At the same time it reduces the
resolution by roughly a factor of 10, yielding about 80cpi. On one hand, this allows to operate at
higher speeds. On the other hand it endangers the feature recognition algorithm and, thus, is the reason
why the system wont work on smooth surfaces like plastics and desks.
Fig. 3 The modified ADNS-2051 mouse sensor equipped with an additional lens to correct the optical path
In a first test, we examined how the optical sensor works on different ground materials. Figure 4
shows a 1x1cm area of the materials examined, which is roughly the region imaged by the mouse
sensor. As we expected, it does not work on desk material, white paper and plastics (4a). It works fine
on office carpet (4b) and tiles. Linoleum (4c) has been identified as being problematic in the current
configuration as the device didnt perform reliably on that. We believe that additional effort in fine-
tuning the lens is necessary to resolve this issue. All of the following experiments were made on the
office carpet surface.
V2Xe
ADNS-2051
CY-7C63723
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Fig. 4 Macroscopic view of different surface structures showing a field of 1x1 cm:
a) plastics as used for office desks b) office carpet c) Linoleum
In a second test, we determined the maximum speed at which the odometer is able to operate at.
Several runs and a statistical analysis showed that this speed is currently at about 2m /s. For most of
the envisioned applications, including robotics, shopping carts and assisting elderly and physically
challenged people, this seems to be sufficient. Nevertheless, bigger sensors and faster processing could
yield even higher operation speeds.
Finally, we determined the accuracy of just the odometer component - excluding the compass - by
measuring the deviation of the reported position from the true position after a well-defined path.
Several tests at different maximum speeds were conducted on a 24.0 meter reference track. As a
conclusion, the error was about 1% of the accumulated path length. Mainly, this error is introduced by
the sensor itself (0,5%) and by false-imaging of the optical lens. Again, for most applications we
consider this being sufficiently precise.
4 Summary and Outlook
We describe a novel approach to build a low-cost high-precision optical navigation device by
combining an optical mouse sensor with a magneto-inductive compass element. Accumulated path
errors are corrected by synchronization with real-world landmarks. For this, the system deploys light
barriers detecting cat-eye reflectors on the ground.
The device works fine on structured office floor materials like carpet and tiles. Additional effort is
required to work on linoleum. The system performs at a maximum speed of 2 m/s with a relative path
error of 1%.
Future investigations focus on increasing the operational speed and deploy RF-ID tags for
synchronization. Due to its cost-effective design while delivering valuable information, we believe
similar devices will impact the navigation market within the next two years.
References
[1] Lars Chittka, Jrgen Tautz: The spectral input to honeybee visual odometry, The Journal of
Experimental Biology 206, pp. 2393-2397, 2003
[2] Jason Campbell, Rahul Sukthankar, Illah Nourbakhsh, Aroon Pahwa: A Robust Visual Odometry
and Precipice Detection System Using Consumer-grade Monocular Vision, Proc. IEEE
International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2005 (ICRA05)
[3] Frederico M. Santos, Valter F. Silva, Lus M. Almeida: A robust, self-localization system for a
small mobile autonomous robot, ISRA 2002 , 3rd ANIRob/IEEE Int. Symposium on Robotics
and Automation, Toluca, Mexico, September 2002.
[4] Kenneth H. Sinclair, Pace Gaillard Willisson, Jay Loring Gainsboro, Lee Davis Weinstein:
Method and apparatus for optical odometry, US-Patent Application Publication No. US
2004/0221790 A1, filed 24.02.2004, published 11.11.2004
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