[beambot]

I'm first author on that Pervasive article... my PhD thesis focused on using passive UHF RFID tags affixed to objects, people, etc to allow mobile robots to quickly take inventory and then approach (locate) tagged objects in the home [1].

Passive UHF RFID tags are nice for a number of reasons: super-low tag cost (sub-$0.10 in bulk), long range (6+ meters), and lack of a battery (tags harvest wireless power from a reader). Bluetooth solutions will have a hard time competing with UHF RFID on these properties -- and that's key for certain applications. However, there are definitely benefits to an alternative solution like wireless triangulation. For example, even the best UHF tag localization algorithms produce error bounds on the order of 0.5 meters (there are workarounds for mobile robots). Plus, the Bluetooth solution doesn't require the reader to be mobile -- you can take a single measurement and get a decent pose estimate.

I still share a lot of your concerns: if this is using triangulation, you'll need multiple base stations (ie. infrastructure costs); many similar systems require extensive calibration; and the effects of multipath, diffusion, and fading can be very tricky to characterize.

As for mapping... SLAM mapping using ultra-low cost laser rangefinders [2] is nearing triviality, and even onboard visual SLAM is becoming imminently feasible. Anyway... happy to speak more offline. My contact info is easy to find.

[1] More details: http://www.travisdeyle.com/publications.html

[2] http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/12/20/ultra-low-cost-laser-r...

[darkarmani]

I happened to work with one of your co-authors a handful of years ago. Did you happen to use a ThingMagic reader? I worked on the software side of the fixed readers (arm-linux based), not the small embedded reader modules. I also added a lot of improvements to the python API for rapid prototyping using the embedded module.

[beambot]

Indeed, I used the ThingMagic M5e. All the code for the (python) drivers [1] and robot behaviors [2] are open sourced.

Funny story... before (and after) doing higher-level robot behaviors, I worked on low-level reader hardware too (with our mutual colleague, I presume). Most recently, it was building SDRs to interact with super-high datarate passive tags with onboard sensors... to build cyborg dragonflies [3].

[1] http://ros.org/wiki/hrl_rfid

[2] http://www.ros.org/wiki/pr2_rfid

[3] http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/06/dragonfly-backpack...

[darkarmani]

I forgot that the stock python drivers weren't open source. The "dragonfly backpack" is a cool looking project.