RFID-based robot localisation: an unconstrained optimisation problem by exploiting RSSI

This paper presents a Linear Least-Squares approach to estimate the pose of a mobile robot based on passive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology at the Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) band. The mobile robot leverages the received signal power to obtain ranging data from a set of reference landmark RFID tags. Then, an optimisation algorithm merges RFID and odometry data to reconstruct the entire robot trajectory. The proposed method does not require precise placement of the landmarks and it is therefore fast and easy to deploy. Both numerical and experimental analysis are presented.