Improved Positioning of an Unmanned Vehicle by Distance-Based Differential GPS
摘要
To navigate an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) in an unstructured area, different methods exist, such as Global Positioning System (GPS), Inertial Navigation System (INS), integration of INS and GPS, and Differential GPS (DGPS) . GPS is a commonly used method to find the coordinates of any target. Due to the inherent low accuracy of GPS, utilizing a single GPS in a UGV leads to inaccurate real-time navigation. One way to overcome this problem is to use the DGPS method. The DGPS method employs one or several base stations (reference stations) at an accurately known location. In the DGPS method, prior knowledge of the coordinates of the base stations is required. This method is highly dependent on the accurate coordinates. This paper proposes a distance-based DGPS method with seven fixed GPS receivers and a UGV receiver. Unlike DGPS, this method does not rely on the exact coordinates of reference stations, allowing this method to be applied everywhere. Hence, the establishment of a local navigation system becomes easily attainable. The results of this study show that the error correction of the proposed method is at 90% and enables seamless navigation for a UGV.