Low-Power Centimeter-Level Localization for Indoor Mobile Robots Based on Ensemble Kalman Smoother Using Received Signal Strength

How to provide a low-cost but accurate localization solution for the indoor mobile robots are essential in many Internet of Things (IoT) applications, such as smart home and asset tracking. To achieve this goal, this article originally proposes a modified two-filter smoother based on ensemble Kalman filter (denoted as EnKS) for the localization of indoor mobile robots. The proposed EnKS algorithm consists of both a forward part of an EnKF with Statistical Linear Regression and a backward part of a modified information Kalman filter with state error vector. The EnKS based on stochastic sampling with ensemble members can achieve better positioning accuracy than other Kalman smoothers. When compared to EnKF, the proposed EnKS combines a backward filter to compensate for the estimation error of EnKF and further improves the accuracy. Furthermore, the implementation of the proposed EnKS is conducted in the real world visible light positioning (VLP) system using pre-existing LED lights for low-cost robot localization. To make a performance comparison, this article also uses baseline smoothers based on extended Kalman filter and central difference Kalman filter in the VLP system. Preliminary experimental results imply that the proposed EnKS is able to achieve the best positioning accuracy, as high as 11.18 cm on average, but with a comparable computational complexity, which enables to meet the demands of many robot applications.