Description

The Starter Set Super-MP-3D is designed for precise indoor positioning and navigation. It can be used for autonomous navigation of mobile robots, vehicles and drones; for industrial applications, for example, forklifts or people tracking in a warehouse for safety and productivity.

The set is particularly good for: production automation, warehouse automation, safety and productivity for people and vehicle tracking; building geo-fencing zone and tracking inside them.

The starter set is a multi-purpose (MP) set based on Super-Beacons.

Particular focus of the set is on accuracy of positioning. The set can provide up to ±2cm precision even before additional sensor fusion or filtering. That accuracy is about 10 times better than what ultra-wide band (UWB) provides and about 100 times better than it can provide BLE (iBeacon) based systems.

It is the most versatile (see supported architectures below) and the easiest to set up and deploy (no need for manual distances measurement or calibration) set available today (May 2020).

By default, Starter Set Super-MP-3D supports NIA and IA (https://marvelmind.com/pics/architectures_comparison.pdf):

• 1D – up to 4 mobile beacons
• 2D – up to 4 submaps, including fully overlapping submaps and 2N beacon redundancy for optimal tracking
• 3D – up to 1 submap with N+1 beacon redundancy

With additional licenses Starter Set Super-MP-3D can support:

• Multi-Frequency (MF) NIA in 3D with N+1 beacon redundancy
• Multi-Frequency (MF) NIA in 2D with N+1 beacon redundancy
• MMSW0004: MF NIA support

Content:

• 4 x Stationary Super-Beacons (19kHz, 25kHz, 37kHz, 45kHz)
• 1 x Mobile Super-Beacon (identical to the stationary Super-Beacons, but on 31kHz)
• 1 x Modem HW v5.1 supporting up to 250 beacons

All beacons (stationary and mobile) are equipped with with 6D IMU (3D accelerometer + 3D gyroscope) and standard 50mm antennas. Effectively, you are getting 5 similar Super-Beacons albeit on different ultrasonic frequencies and a modem.

Super-Beacons are a newer version of Beacons HW v4.9 and superior to them in nearly all aspects:

• Super-Beacons have sharp DSP filters (like Mini-RX or Industrial-RX). The Super-Beacons are more sensitive and more interference resistant than Beacons HW v4.9 that rely on analogue filters
• Super-Beacons have improved TX part and power-saving features that allows up to 10x battery lifetime improvement over Beacons HW v4.9 (depending on the settings and update rate)
• Super-Beacons as well as Mini-RX and Industrial-RX use a single wide-beam microphone for receiving ultrasound, thus making submaps in complex conditions (larger distances, for example, or noisy environment) much easier to build, than that with Beacons HW v4.9, because the microphone is always on and it has a wide reception diagram. Whereas, with Beacons HW v4.9 in those challenging conditions, one would need to turn off some sensors and, generally speaking, take care about the number of sensors (RX1-RX5) turned on in order to provide proper coverage, on the one hand, and to maintain the right sensitivity on the other
• All Super-Beacons have 6D IMU (3D accelerometer and 3D gyroscope)

Super-Beacons are better than Mini-RX and Mini-TX as well:

• Super-Beacons are dual-use: they can both receive and transmit ultrasound. You can absolutely freely use them as stationary and as mobile
• Super-Beacons have external pins (UART, SPI, reset, etc.)
• Super-Beacons have external antenna for longer radio range and larger maps

The navigation system is based on stationary ultrasonic beacons united by radio interface in a license-free band (915/868 MHz ). The location of a mobile beacon is calculated based on the propagation delay of an ultrasonic signal (Time-Of-Flight or TOF) to a set of stationary ultrasonic beacons using trilateration. No manual calibration is required. No need to know exact locations of the beacons – the system builds the map of beacons automatically.

The set contains a mobile beacon with IMU that gives a possibility for ultrasonic + IMU (3D accelerometer + 3D gyro) fusion. That allows much faster update rate – up to 100Hz and above.