Development of a Real-time Outdoor Positioning System for an Escaping Target

Abstract

Tracking and pursuit has vast applications such as wildlife monitoring and military applications among others. It requires accurate information in real-time on location of assets. In most of tracking scenarios, Global Positioning System (GPS) is mainly used to provide location coordinates in terms of longitudes, latitudes and altitude. These coordinates are then transmitted through some wireless system to a central server. Usually user relies on third party map providers such as Google maps and MapQuest maps which interpret position data relative to land marks. In this paper, a GPS based system for outdoor positioning of an evading ground target relative to the pursuer is proposed. The system captures the GPS data of the pursuer and the evader and uses the data to compute in real time the bearing and the distance between them. This information can be utilized for pursuit purposes. The development and testing of electronic hardware and software is presented where location information is acquired using GPS module and transmitted using Wi-Fi to a central computer for interpretation. This real-time location system is part of a positioning system for exact location of an escaping ground target in an arena. Keywords—Outdoor Positioning, Pursuit navigation,Tracking systems