Mobile GPS Transceiver Arrays for Leapfrogging Multi-Rover Navigation

Moblie GPS Transceiver Platforms

The "stationary" transceivers are not required to be stationary at all times if they are mounted on mobile platforms. This leads to the concept of leapfrog-mode navigation, in which the array traverses as a whole from one location to another and expands its coverage by alternately picking up and moving forward one unit while the others are temporarily stationary. By having at least two units stationary as local reference in each leapfrogging step, the overall array trajectories can be determined globally with respect to their original array locations. Although some geometric errors gradually accumulate when repeating the steps during long traverse, the global drifting error can be minimized by carefully designing the array geometry at each step. The laboratory demonstration has shown that the drifting error is less then 0.5% of the total distance traveled (40 m). Mobile transceiver platforms are currently being developed to evaluate the error growth over km-level traverse.

Leapfrogging Steps

Field demonstration at the Marscape, 03/04/04

Video

Leapfroging Multi-Rovers at the Marscape [MPG VCD 360x240 8MB]