Robotics and eSafety Research Group

This paper presents a global localization system based on WiFi (Wireless-Fidelity) signal strength measure with priori map and its application to a navigation system based on a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP). The POMDP navigation system uses the observations of the WiFi signal measure and ultrasounds of the robot and it achieves a global localization from the first iteration of the algorithm without needing additional sensors in the environment, since the WiFi main functionality is to establish a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). This paper presents a novel algorithm called WSLAM (WiFi Simultaneous Localization And Mapping) to solve the initial calibration stage.