A Low-Cost GPS Positioning System With High Accuracy For Small Robotic Devices?

Ingmar excels in building most interesting electronic projects like machine learning, robotics, differential GPS, and others. The one we are talking about here is a small GPS navigation system that can be used for small sized systems like robotic cars. The most usual problem faced with respect to such devices is that the accuracy gets compromised over 4-5 meters distance when filters aren’t used. We recently came across one such innovator who faced a similar problem and found solution in combination of term differential GPS system and RTK library.

Fig. 1: RasPiGNSS modules over Raspberry Pi Systems

Since professional differential GPS systems can cost thousands of Euros he decided to turn to Raspberry Pi to minimize the costs. And it worked. He worked on a simple GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) that worked with Raspberry Pi and RTK Library and is called as RasPiGNSS “Aldebaran”. This receiver allows determination of one’s own position precisely in the RTK module. The precision value here came down to 20 cms which means the robot will be able to determine its exact position beyond a diameter of 20 cms.

Costing

The basic structure of this module was divided into two parts – a station and a mobile unit. Now, the RasPiGNSS “Aldebaran” costs around 300 Euros for a base station while the mobile unit costs around 250 Euros. The total falls under 100 Euros, not a bad deal at all, isn’t it?

Fig. 2: RasPiGNSS Modules

Structure

The base station here has an installed statoinar while the mobile unit gets mounted over the moving car. The former stays in one place to decode the car’s position given by GPS data received as RTCM3 stream from mobile unit. The two stay connected via radio link and get GPS stream from base station. The raw materials needed for building station include Raspberry Pi model B, casing, W-LAN module, XBee USB Adapter, XBee Pro wireless module, GPS antenna TW-2410, GPS module RASPiGNSS “Aldebaran”, and a 8GB micro SD card.

The structure of mobile station is identical to base station technically. The only difference lies in usage and version of Raspberry Pi used with it. It is suggested to use Raspberry Pi 2 Model B and further versions for mobile unit.

Conclusion

You can easily purchase all hardware from internet which makes task easier. Assembling of these products is not very tough since everything is either screwed or plugged. Finally, you can rest assured that you need not spend thousands to bring precision to small device GPS systems. Rest details can be checked out on