Testbed Design for Robot Navigation through Differential Ray Tracing

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a surge in interest towards the refinement of autonomous systems, with a specific focus on advancing robot navigation through the effective utilization of sensing data. However, this heightened focus has brought forth significant privacy concerns. To address these issues and concurrently harness the advantages of sensing-based robot navigation, this paper introduces a testbed, designed to facilitate robot navigation via the application of a Differential Ray Tracing (DRT) approach. We delineate a systematic pipeline for constructing such a testbed, employing Lidar sensors from commercially available handheld devices. The acquired data is integrated into NVIDIA’s Sionna tool. This integration process serves to enable the formulation of Radio Frequency (RF) propagation models tailored for mobile robots operating within indoor environments. This paper represents a significant stride toward the practical implementation of robot navigation by employing the RT-generated RF propagation of the environment. Through our proposed testbed, we contribute to the development of a robust and privacy-preserving approach for robot navigation in autonomous environment.