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From: roy@phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics,comp.robotics
Subject: Re: Need a position tracker for a mobile robot.
Message-ID: <1990Oct29.055452.15714@phri.nyu.edu>
Date: 29 Oct 90 05:54:52 GMT
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behara@turing.cs.rpi.edu (Albert Behar) writes:
> Does any one have any idea where I can get some sort of
> tracking device or how others have treated this problem?

	How much money do you want to spend, and how accurate/precise do
you need it?  One possibility might be to buy a marine LORAN receiver.  You
can get them for as little as about $400 now, complete with some sort of
RS-232-ish interface, runs off of 12V, not much larger or heavier than a
big calculator.  Absolure accuracy isn't very good, but precision and
repeatability is very good, down to perhaps 100 feet or so.

	If you want to do better than that, and have really deep pockets,
you might think about a GPS receiver.  There are currently only a few on
the market, with price tags an order of magnitude greater than the LORAN
sets, but they will get cheaper as time goes on (it's a new technology) and
are supposed to be accurate down to like 10 feet, or something like that.

	I suspect that neither are really what you are looking for, but I
figured it might give you some ideas.

/roy
--
Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy
"Arcane?  Did you say arcane?  It wouldn't be Unix if it wasn't arcane!"