<div style="color:black;font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wow! The Marvelmind specs and videos look great! Looks like they've been incorporated since 2016. Specs are almost exactly what I am trying to do. Very neat. Thank you for pointing me to that!
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<div>They are doing 3D trilateration. Cool. 3D geometry always bumfuzzles me so I haven't even tried it.</div>
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<div>They only require 2 beacons for 2D, and 3 beacons for 3D, so they are doing time-of-flight (as their website says) based on the radio synchronization. I'm doing difference in time-of-flight which does not use a radio and does not require synchronization but which requires 3 beacons for 2D. The radio idea is better and faster, but I never found a radio that had a communications stack with low jitter. Radio is not my thing, so I'm sure there are radios that can do the job that I don't know about.<br>
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<div>Since their beacons are ultrasonic, they require line-of-hearing which is essentially line-of-sight between the beacons and the robot. The localizer I demonstrated operated at audible frequencies and was not affected by most obstacles, so my line-of-hearing is much more than line-of-sight. People rightly objected to my localizer's audible noise, so I switched to ultrasonics, which have all sorts of problems, such as line-of-sight requirements and absorption.</div>
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<div>I am surprised that the range is 30 meters or more at ultrasonic frequencies. The absorption in air (not the 1/r spreading) is huge at those frequencies, far worse than the spreading. For one of the outdoor DPRG contests, I estimated I'd need powerful emitters (50 watts or more each) in order to cover a 150 foot square arena with ultrasonic frequencies. I abandoned the experiment. Neat that Marvelmind solved that problem.</div>
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<div>I've been trying to keep the frequencies low to avoid both the line-of-sight and the absorption problems, and to make omnidirectionality easier. Maybe I will continue to work on that. Otherwise, it seems Marvelmind has solved the problem! Good stuff.</div>
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<div>Later,</div>
<div>John Swindle<br>
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<div style="font-family:arial,helvetica;font-size:10pt;color:black">-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Karim Virani via DPRGlist <dprglist@lists.dprg.org><br>
To: dprglist <dprglist@dprg.org><br>
Sent: Thu, Feb 20, 2020 9:32 am<br>
Subject: [Dprglist] ultrasonic positioning systems<br>
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<div dir="ltr">Does anyone have any opinions about the MarvelMind Indoor Navigation system?
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<div><a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.superdroidrobots.com/shop/item.aspx/ips-indoor-navigation-positioning-system-dsp-starter-set-nia-v5-07/2664/">https://www.superdroidrobots.com/shop/item.aspx/ips-indoor-navigation-positioning-system-dsp-starter-set-nia-v5-07/2664/</a></div>
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