A Study on the Implementation of RFID-based Autonomous Navigation System for Robotic Cellular Phone(RCP)

Industrial and economical importance of CP(Cellular Phone) is growing rapidly. Combined with IT technology, CP is currently one of the most attractive technologies for all. However, unless we find a breakthrough to the technology, its growth may slow down soon. RT(Robot Technology) is considered one of the most promising next generation technology. Unlike the industrial robot of the past, today's robots require advanced technologies, such as soft computing, human-friendly interface, interaction technique, speech recognition, object recognition, and many others. In this study, we present a new technological concept named RCP(Robotic Cellular Phone), which combines RT & CP, in the vision of opening a new direction to the advance of CP, IT, and RT all together. RCP consists of 3 sub-modules. They are $RCP^{Mobility}$, $RCP^{Interaction}$, and $RCP^{Interaction}$. $RCP^{Mobility}$ is the main focus of this paper. It is an autonomous navigation system that combines RT mobility with CP. Through $RCP^{Mobility}$, we should be able to provide CP with robotic functionalities such as auto-charging and real-world robotic entertainments. Eventually, CP may become a robotic pet to the human being. $RCP^{Mobility}$ consists of various controllers. Two of the main controllers are trajectory controller and self-localization controller. While Trajectory Controller is responsible for the wheel-based navigation of RCP, Self-Localization Controller provides localization information of the moving RCP. With the coordinate information acquired from RFID-based self-localization controller, Trajectory Controller refines RCP's movement to achieve better RCP navigations. In this paper, a prototype system we developed for $RCP^{Mobility}$ is presented. We describe overall structure of the system and provide experimental results of the RCP navigation.