Augmenting GPS with Geolocated Fiducials to Improve Accuracy for Mobile Robot Applications

Abstract

In recent decades Global Positioning Systems (GPS) have become a ubiquitous tool to support navigation. Traditional GPS has an error in the order of 10–15 m, which is adequate for many applications (e.g., vehicle navigation) but for many robotics applications lacks required accuracy. In this paper we describe a technique, FAGPS (Fiducial Augmented Global Positioning System) to periodically use fiducial markers to lower the GPS drift, and hence for a small time-period have a more accurate GPS determination. We describe results from simulations and from field testing in open-sky environments where horizontal GPS accuracy was improved from a twice the distance root mean square (2DRMS) error of 5.5 m to 2.99 m for a period of up-to 30 min.