Wireless and Pyroelectric Sensory Fusion System for Indoor Human/Robot Localization and Monitoring

An indoor localization and monitoring system for robots and people is an important issue in robotics research. Although several monitoring systems are currently under development by previous investigators, these issues remain significant difficulties. For instance, the pyroelectric IR (PIR) system provides less accurate information of human location and is restricted when there are multiple targets. Furthermore, the RF localization system is constrained by its limited accuracy. In this study, we propose an indoor localization and monitoring system based on a wireless and PIR (WPIR) sensory fusion system. We develop a sensor-network-based localization method called the WPIR inference algorithm. This algorithm determines the fused position from both the PIR localization system and RF signal localization system, which utilize the received signal strength propagation model. We have developed and experimentally demonstrated a WPIR sensory fusion system, which can be successfully applied in localizing multiple targets based on two robots and two people in this study. With an accurate localization mechanism for the indoor environment, the provision of appropriate services for people can be realized.