Development of a low-cost location estimation method for the safety management of workers in Waste to Energy Plants

Abstract

In the operation of waste incineration facilities, safety management of workers is one of the important elements. In safety management at waste incineration facilities, estimating the position of workers plays a crucial role. However, there is no established method for positioning in indoor environments where GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) does not function, such as in waste incineration facilities. Therefore, this development aimed to realize a low-cost indoor positioning system utilizing existing facilities such as Wi-Fi.We built a positioning method using machine learning that utilizes the RSSI of the existing Wi-Fi. Also, to shorten the time related to the measurement of data linking coordinates and sensor data necessary for introducing the positioning system, we created a device combining SLAM and Wi-Fi RSSI sensors.In an actual cleaning plant, we achieved an average error of 2.78m. Also, we shortened the time related to the operation of linking coordinates and sensor data to 1/100 of the conventional time.