As the restaurant industry is facing labor shortage issues, the use of meal delivery robots instead of waiters/waitresses not only allows the customers to experience the impact of robot technology but also benefits the restaurant business financially by reducing labor costs. Most existing meal delivery robots employ magnetic navigation technologies, which require magnetic strip installation and changes to the restaurant decor. Once the moving path is changed, the magnetic strips need to be re-laid. This study proposes multisource information fusion, i.e., the fusion of ultra-wide band positioning technology with an odometer and a low-cost gyroscope accelerometer, to achieve the positioning of a non-rail meal delivery robot with navigation. By using a low-cost electronic compass and gyroscope accelerometer, the delivery robot can move along a fixed orbit in a flexible and cost-effective manner with steering control. Ultra-wide band (UWB) and track estimation algorithm are combined by extended Kalman filter (EKF), and the positioning error after fusion is about 15 cm, which is accepted by restaurants. In summary, the proposed approach has some potential for commercial applications.

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The artificial fish swarm algorithm (AFSA) is one of the state-of-the-art swarm intelligent techniques, which is widely utilized for optimization purposes. Fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) error parameters such as scale factors, biases and misalignment errors are relatively unstable, especially with the environmental disturbances and the aging of fiber coils. These uncalibrated error parameters are the main reasons that the precision of FOG-based strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) degraded. This research is mainly on the application of a novel artificial fish swarm algorithm (NAFSA) on FOG error coefficients recalibration/identification. First, the NAFSA avoided the demerits (e.g., lack of using artificial fishes’ pervious experiences, lack of existing balance between exploration and exploitation, and high computational cost) of the standard AFSA during the optimization process. To solve these weak points, functional behaviors and the overall procedures of AFSA have been improved with some parameters eliminated and several supplementary parameters added. Second, a hybrid FOG error coefficients recalibration algorithm has been proposed based on NAFSA and Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) approaches. This combination leads to maximum utilization of the involved approaches for FOG error coefficients recalibration. After that, the NAFSA is verified with simulation and experiments and its priorities are compared with that of the conventional calibration method and optimal AFSA. Results demonstrate high efficiency of the NAFSA on FOG error coefficients recalibration.

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Based on the 3D Reduced Inertial Sensor System (3D-RISS) and the Machine Learning Enhanced Visual Data (MLEVD), an integrated vehicle navigation system is proposed in this paper. In demanding conditions such as outdoor satellite signal interference and indoor navigation, this work incorporates vehicle smooth navigation. Firstly, a landmark is set up and both of its size and position are accurately measured. Secondly, the image with the landmark information is captured quickly by using the machine learning. Thirdly, the template matching method and the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) are then used to correct the errors of the Inertial Navigation System (INS), which employs the 3D-RISS to reduce the overall cost and ensuring the vehicular positioning accuracy simultaneously. Finally, both outdoor and indoor experiments are conducted to verify the performance of the 3D-RISS/MLEVD integrated navigation technology. Results reveal that the proposed method can effectively reduce the accumulated error of the INS with time while maintaining the positioning error within a few meters.