Vehicle Tracking in Warehouses via Bluetooth Beacon Angle-of-Arrival

Motivation

This proposal is presented in the context of a tracking system for forklifts based on Bluetooth beacons. The beacons are placed at fixed locations in a factory floor, and periodically send packets with their ID. The forklift is a moving vehicle, equipped with an antenna array which receives the beacons and can determine its stationary position on the warehouse floor by knowing the relative Angles-of-Arrival (AoA) of each incoming beacon.

So, the objective of this work is to determine the method which allows for near-real-time tracking of the forklift, based on the Angle-of-Arrival of the Bluetooth beacons.

Proposed Work Plan

• Developing the algorithm/code required to process the incoming BLE beacon data taking into account the movement of the forklift, to allow for position calculation (i.e., movement tracking)
• Feed the simulator with arbitrary room and beacon arrangements, to evaluate the tracking performance for different number of beacons, beacon density, signal strength, forklift movement speed, etc.
• Determine the efficiency of the position tracking.
• Perform real-world testing of the algorithm. A moving platform, equipped with an antenna array and embedded micro-controller executing the positioning algorithm, will be moved through a hallway with BLE beacons. The real-world position tracking will be compared to the simulator.

Details

• Status: Completed
• Student: Telmo Francisco da Costa Soares
• Thesis Document