Show HN: Indoor positioning for robots and AGVs using UWB beacons

The terms on this are very restrictive. They allow Estimote to screw you over later. They could raise the service charge on your existing system, turn off your beacons, and prevent you from using devices that don't pay them with their beacons[1]. You're not even allowed to try to improve on the accuracy of the location info they let you have.

Customer shall not, and shall not permit others to:

- use the SDK for any purpose other than for the Purpose set forth in Sub-section 5(a) of this Agreement;

- reproduce, in whole or in part, the Software Development Kit; except as expressly provided in Sub-section 5(a) with respect to the Sample Code, modify, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise attempt (y) to defeat, avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate or otherwise circumvent any software protection mechanisms in the Software Development Kit or the Beacons or components thereof, including without limitation any such mechanism used to restrict or control the functionality of the SDK or the Beacons, or (z) to derive the source code or the underlying ideas, algorithms, structure or organization from the SDK or the Beacons or components thereof;

- except as expressly provided in Sub-section 5(a) with respect to the Sample Code, alter, adapt, modify or translate the SDK in any way for any purpose, including without limitation error correction ...

All your robots are belong to us.

These are terms for an ad-oriented system, which is what they really do. The system is intended for collecting data on customers. ("Harrods, the world-famous department store now has indoor navigation in more than 330 departments, thanks to Estimote Beacons. A system has been installed in order to 'assist shoppers to find a particular brand'.") Those are not suitable terms for the system that runs your warehouse robots.

[1] https://estimote.com/legal/terms-of-sale.html

Hi Hacker News,

this is Jakub, co-founder of Estimote, Inc.

Earlier this year we have added additional UWB radio to our BLE beacons. We did that mostly for floor-plan auto-mapping (read more here: http://blog.estimote.com/post/154460651570/estimote-beacons-...)

Many people asked us if it is possible for robots/drones/AGVs to connect to UWB beacons and get few-inches precision location positioning, so we have decided to release a ROS package.

You can install it on your Raspberry PI, connect to UWB beacons and start locating your robot/device.

We are around - let us know if you have any questions?

I tried doing something similar. I rigged an array of Bluetooth receivers to a Raspberry Pi inside a large cabinet, and then attached inexpensive beacons to liquor bottles. The idea was to be able to quickly locate individual bottles.

The project failed because the drivers or devices don't provide enough precision (1 dBm might represent several inches).

With room mapping, you can use round trip time, which is a bit more reliable.