Indoor Localization for Quadrotors using Invisible Projected Tags

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel indoor localization method for quadrotors using invisible projected tags and screen-camera communication, achieving high accuracy and speed with minimal hardware.

Contribution

It presents the first use of screen-camera communication for AR robot localization, enabling real-time, centimeter-level indoor positioning with simple hardware.

Findings

Achieves localization accuracy within ten centimeters.

Operates at approximately ten frames per second.

Eliminates the need for coordinate alignment steps.

Abstract

Augmented reality (AR) technology has been introduced into the robotics field to narrow the visual gap between indoor and outdoor environments. However, without signals from satellite navigation systems, flight experiments in these indoor AR scenarios need other accurate localization approaches. This work proposes a real-time centimeter-level indoor localization method based on psycho-visually invisible projected tags (IPT), requiring a projector as the sender and quadrotors with high-speed cameras as the receiver. The method includes a modulation process for the sender, as well as demodulation and pose estimation steps for the receiver, where screen-camera communication technology is applied to hide fiducial tags using human vision property. Experiments have demonstrated that IPT can achieve accuracy within ten centimeters and a speed of about ten FPS. Compared with other localization methods for AR robotics platforms, IPT is affordable by using only a projector and high-speed cameras as hardware consumption and convenient by omitting a coordinate alignment step. To the authors' best knowledge, this is the first time screen-camera communication is utilized for AR robot localization.