Indoor Positioning System based on Visible Light Communication for Mobile Robot in Nuclear Power Plant

TL;DR

This paper presents a radiation-tolerant visible light positioning system for mobile robots in nuclear power plants, achieving high accuracy and robustness in extreme environments for inspection and maintenance tasks.

Contribution

A novel VLP system with radiation resistance, intelligent LED lamps, and shielding protection for cameras, providing precise indoor positioning in nuclear environments.

Findings

Achieves an average positioning accuracy of 0.82cm.

Ensures 90% of positioning errors are below 1.417cm.

Demonstrates effective operation in radiation environments.

Abstract

Visible light positioning (VLP) is widely believed to be a cost-effective answer to the growing demanded for robot indoor positioning. Considering that some extreme environments require robot to be equipped with a precise and radiation-resistance indoor positioning system for doing difficult work, a novel VLP system with high accuracy is proposed to realize the long-playing inspection and intervention under radiation environment. The proposed system with sufficient radiation-tolerance is critical for operational inspection, maintenance and intervention tasks in nuclear facilities. Firstly, we designed intelligent LED lamp with visible light communication (VLC) function to dynamically create the indoor GPS tracking system. By installing the proposed lamps that replace standard lighting in key locations in the nuclear power plant, the proposed system can strengthen the safety of mobile robot and help for efficient inspection in the large-scale field. Secondly, in order to enhance the radiation-tolerance and multi-scenario of the proposed system, we proposed a shielding protection method for the camera vertically installed on the robot, which ensures that the image elements of the camera namely the captured VLP information is not affected by radiation. Besides, with the optimized visible light positioning algorithm based on dispersion calibration method, the proposed VLP system can achieve an average positioning accuracy of 0.82cm and ensure that 90% positioning errors are less than 1.417cm. Therefore, the proposed system not only has sufficient radiation-tolerance but achieve state-of-the-art positioning accuracy in the visible light positioning field.