Global position system sensor model for robotics simulator

Abstract

Today there is acute problem of automatic navigation for different types of robots, unmanned vehicles and people. Increasing number of robotic vehicles requires them to have more accurate navigation in the environment. Development of algorithms for precise navigation requires a large amount of original data from sensors and it is impossible to test some situations the real world. Simulation as a method to study such objects is promising in solving this problem. The aim of this work is to develop a simulation model for universal global position system (GPS) sensor and configurable models of atmospheric effects to simulate real GPS receiver measurements in the normal environment. To achieve this goal a study of GPS receivers and modeling was done. The problem of modeling of the sensor system is considered for GPS system and Earth's atmosphere, but the results can be easily adapted to other sensors, such as GLONASS and GALILEO. As a simulation package for environment, we chose Unreal Engine 4 because of its precise physical simulation, allowing integration model of the model directly into the environment. Using Unreal Engine package we developed and tested model of the atmosphere and GPS receiver. Possibility of models’ configuration allowed us to test compliance of our model to the real environment. The resulting accuracy in accordance with real GPS receiver is over 95 %.