There’s More Than GPS: A New Type Of Locationing

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GPS is king, but it can still be unreliable. A busy street surrounded by skyscrapers won’t be getting great signal, nor will the inside of a building. For autonomous driving to become viable, the vehicle knowing exactly where it is at all times is crucial. 5D Robotics is working on just the right system.

Even vast arrays of overlapping sensors can get things wrong, and even a small error in location can mean catastrophe when it’s used by a multi-ton moving object. 5D, instead, is working on a land-based beacon system.

The Californian company proposed we mark locations with transmitters broadcasting in ultra-wide-band (UWB) frequencies. UWB signals are low power, which makes for short range – about 200m – but if you have enough beacons, that shouldn’t be a problem, says Philip Mann, 5D VP for sales.

“It’s a peer-to-peer system,” Mann told IEEE Spectrum. “The beacons measure the distance between themselves by simple ranging; then a vehicle can navigate by triangulation.”

The company is testing the waters carefully. They’ve adapted their system for use with some of the slowest vehicles around: wheelchairs. 5D is developing, in cooperation with San Francisco startup Whill, a new type of wheelchair: the Model A.

The Model A won’t be using UWB only, but it will be one of its main features.

“Hotels could use it to deliver elderly people to their cars; casinos could use it to deliver high rollers to their playing tables,” Mann says.

When this round of safe testing is complete, the company plans to go after a more lucrative market: the military. They imagine a system where a soldier directs a cargo-moving autonomous vehicle with a simple beacon: “They are good for following—that’s when a soldier walks or drives in front, and an autonomous vehicle follows, carrying cargo,” Mann says.