They mention GPS is not accurate enough and thus different solution is needed.
Could you do local differential-GPS solution? Put the ”base station” to charging base (which likely remains static) and transmit the correction information over wifi or using some unlicensed frequency.
You really want a carrier-phase-tracking L1+L2 receiver on each end for that sort of usage which isn't inexpensive (yet).
The beacons also could be adopted by future indoor projects of theirs... that would be really nice. My roomba gets lost easily when it starts getting dark out.
It could work and that plus an IMU is what we were doing at my now recently defunct lawnmower startup. For us to have the precision we needed we had about a 3500$ setup to do so.
Not really, we were using an IMU with a magnetometer and it was reasonably stable when it was setup correctly. As well as calibrated well. That with the GPS made things stable enough that it was at least a very good demo.
Could you do local differential-GPS solution? Put the ”base station” to charging base (which likely remains static) and transmit the correction information over wifi or using some unlicensed frequency.