Mixed Human-Vehicle Safety · Fleet Dispatch · Zone Control — RTLS for AGV/AMR

AGV / AMR Fleet Tracking & Mixed-Traffic Safety System

P-Square delivers an RTLS positioning solution for factories and warehouses operating AGVs and AMRs. A vehicle's own SLAM knows where it is — but not whether anyone is nearby. P-Square combines UWB PDOA multi-antenna anchors with relative positioning while in motion: the anchor mounts on the vehicle itself and measures range and bearing to tagged personnel and carts around it, while the back end shows personnel, AGVs and equipment together to enable traffic control and zone control.

Pain Points and Solutions by Unit

Unit	Pain Point	Solution
Production / Warehouse	AGVs and workers share aisles; corners and racking create blind spots and collision risk.	Personnel and AGVs are tracked together; the system arbitrates right of way at junctions and blind spots and slows vehicles in advance.
Fleet Dispatch	With many AGVs running, it is hard to see which is where, which is idle, and which are queued on the same route.	Live AGV location and task-status dashboard; heat maps identify routinely congested route segments.
Safety / EHS	Workers stray into AGV travel lanes and automated work cells and must be stopped immediately.	Restricted zones and zone control raise an instant alert on tag entry and can trigger deceleration or a stop.
Vehicle Integration	AGV LiDAR SLAM localises the vehicle only; it cannot identify nearby people or their distance.	Mount a UWB PDOA multi-antenna anchor on the vehicle to perform relative positioning of nearby personnel tags while in motion, filling the gap SLAM cannot see.

System Applications

Personnel Tracking

Live worker positions with restricted-zone alerts and one-touch duress.

AGV Tracking

Live AGV / AMR position, route and task status.

Equipment Tracking

Live location and automatic stocktake of carts, fixtures and instruments.

Traffic Control

Right-of-way arbitration and advance deceleration at junctions and blind spots.

Zone Control

Restricted-zone alerts for automated cells, able to trigger slow-down or stop.

Solution Modules

Module	Positioning Technology	Accuracy / Coverage	Hardware	Core Value
Vehicle-mounted relative positioning	UWB PDOA (on-board array antenna)	Relative positioning while in motion	On-board UWB anchor + personnel tags	Fills SLAM blind spots; measures range and bearing to nearby people directly
Fixed infrastructure tracking	UWB ToA / BLE	10–30 cm (line of sight) / 1–3 m	Fixed anchors + tags	Site-wide personnel and vehicle map, traffic control, zone control
AGV self-localisation	LiDAR SLAM + encoder fusion	Vehicle self-localisation	On-board sensors	Complements UWB relative positioning for overall stability
Back-end management	Aggregates the positioning data above	Site-wide grid	RTLS web platform	Restricted zones, historical records, heat maps, trajectory replay, dwell time

Technology Highlight

Relative Positioning in Motion — Put the Anchor on the Vehicle

Conventional RTLS mounts anchors on walls and tags on people. P-Square adds another option: mount the UWB PDOA multi-antenna anchor on the AGV / AMR itself, so relative positioning of nearby tagged personnel continues while the vehicle moves. For safety applications, what a vehicle actually needs is not its absolute coordinate on the site map, but the bearing and distance to the nearest person.

On-board UWB PDOA array antenna — a single unit resolves range and bearing.
Relative positioning of surrounding tags is maintained while the vehicle is moving.
Complements on-board LiDAR SLAM and encoder fusion.
Can be paired with fixed anchors to obtain absolute coordinates and relative range simultaneously.

Extended use: the same positioning foundation supports automatic stocktakes of carts and fixtures, production-line labour analysis, and integration with existing MES / WMS systems via Web API.

Frequently Asked Questions

Our AGVs already run LiDAR SLAM — why add UWB?

SLAM answers "where am I" by matching environmental contours, but it cannot identify moving objects or tell whether a contour is a person or a pallet. UWB relative positioning fills exactly that gap: for tagged personnel, the vehicle measures bearing and distance directly, unaffected by lighting or line-of-sight blind spots. The two are complementary, not alternatives.

Must every worker wear a tag? What about people without one?

UWB relative positioning only detects tagged personnel. In practice we therefore recommend retaining the vehicle's existing LiDAR and vision-based obstacle avoidance as a second layer: LiDAR detects all obstacles, while UWB precisely identifies the bearing and distance of people for earlier reaction. P-Square also offers an RGBD-plus-LiDAR navigation and obstacle-avoidance solution.

Factories are full of metal — does that affect UWB?

UWB achieves 10–30 cm accuracy in line-of-sight conditions. Multipath effects in metallic environments are compensated with NLOS (non-line-of-sight) estimation together with particle filters and a motion model. Where centimetre-level precision is not required, a lower-cost Bluetooth solution is also available.

Can this integrate with our existing MES / WMS or AGV dispatch system?

Yes. P-Square provides a Web API and iframe interface so position and event data can be pushed to existing systems in real time. Traffic-control and zone-control alerts can also be delivered as events for the dispatch system to act on by slowing or stopping a vehicle.

Let AGVs See People, and People See AGVs

Contact the P-Square project team to plan mixed-traffic safety positioning for production and warehousing.

Professional Consultation