A wireless sensor system for global self-localization and collaborative actioning

Recent progress in MEMS technology and miniaturization together with low power radio solutions have enabled new concepts of wireless sensor devices and applications. In this article, we present a wireless sensor system developed for conducting experiments in global self-localization, collaborative actioning, and gestural control. The sensor system consists of multiple wireless nodes, based on the nRF24L01 radio transceiver, and a base station. Each sensor node includes 3-axis accelerometer, atmospheric pressure sensor, photo detector, and a microphone. For global self-localization experiments 3-axis magnetometer was added to a sensor node by using the expansion bus of the node. Depending on the application the sensor data is stored into the flash memory inside the base station or sent directly to a host computer through the radio link. The selected applications and preliminary results are also presented.