International Journal of Latest Technology in Engineering, Management & Applied Science (IJLTEMAS)

Volume VII, Issue IV, April 2018 | ISSN 2278-2540

Arduino Based 3D Trilatration System

Mohammad Saquib Naurangabadi1, Mounika Chintapatla 2, Shital Nimbalkar 3, T.K. Zombade 4
1 ,2,3,4
Department of Electronics and Telecommunication, Sinhgad Institute of Technology and Science, Pune, Maharashtra, India

Abstract— Trilateration is the process that uses locations of plane. Also, the formulation is such that one center is at the
points by measurement of distances, using the geometry of origin, and one other is on the x-axis. It is possible to
circles, spheres or triangles to calculate a particular point. formulate the equations in this manner since any three non-
Computer generated graphics is used in various places of design collinear points lie on a unique plane. After finding the
generation such as automobile designing, map designing and
solution, it can be transformed back to the original three-
various areas of graphics generation. The conventional method
uses Computer Aided Drawings (CAD) and it requires a working dimensional Cartesian coordinate system.
knowledge of the softwares used and the process takes time to The trilateration method would provide the required details
turn a nonverbal information into visual form. It is much easier
required to calculate the coordinates accurately and effectively.
to draw directly than on CAD. This paper shows an arduino
based system to design and implement these computer-generated
The equations of the sphere can be solved to get cartesian
designs directly on 3D space using ultrasonic sensors and the equivalent coordinates which is much more familiar and easy
method of trilatration. to interpret and are shown as below
Key words: Trilatration, Computer Aided Drawings, 3D d12 = x2 +y2 +z2
modelling, 3D positioning, Ultrasonic Sensors.
d22 = x2 +(y−l)2 +z2
I. INTRODUCTION d32 = x2 +y2 +(z−l)2

T hese days computer generated graphics are used almost

everywhere. The ease of using various softwares for the
generation of graphics and designs makes the process simpler.
But a lot of work goes in learning and understanding of the
software. The process will become much simpler if the design
can be implemented by drawing the design directly on a 3D
space. This can be achieved by using the technique of 3D
Trilatration. Trilateration is a method to determine the
position of an object based on simultaneous range
measurements from three stations located at known sites [1].
Trilatration is widely used in Global Positioning System (GPS)
for the purpose of navigation. There are several ways to
implement trilatration such as by using 3D point cloud [3],
radio-tomographic imaging [4] and by using Ultrasonic
Sensors [5] and point positioning can also be calculated using
other methods as given in [2]. This paper deals with the
application of 3D Trilatration using ultrasonic sensors and
arduino uno for the implementation of 3D canvas and the
future scope for improvements.
This paper is organized in a following way: Theory to
calculate co-ordinates for system is given in II, the
implementation of system is given in III and the results and Figure 1 Co-ordinates Calculation
coclusion is discussed in IV and V respectively.
III. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE SYSTEM
II. CO-ORDINATES CALCULATION
The system works as a 3D canvas which enables the user
The intersections of the surfaces of three spheres is found to draw directly on space in three dimensions and the
by formulating the equations for the three sphere surfaces and generated graphics appears onto the monitor screen. The
then solving the three equations for the three unknowns, x, y, essential components required to implement this system
and z. To simplify the calculations, the equations are includes: ultrasonic sensors, Arduino uno and the python
formulated so that the centers of the spheres are on the z = 0 program that captures, process and plot the data respectively.

www.ijltemas.in Page 357

 International Journal of Latest Technology in Engineering, Management & Applied Science (IJLTEMAS)
Volume VII, Issue IV, April 2018 | ISSN 2278-2540

The system uses four ultrasonic sensors out of which one works as output pin. This pin is high for a period of time
ultrasonic sensor acts as a transmitter and rest of the three which is equal to the time taken for the ultrasonic wave to
ultrasonic sensors are used as receivers. The block diagram of travel back to the sensors. This is how the distance is
arduino based 3D trilateration system is shown in figure 2. calculated using a single ultrasonic sensor. This setup was
further modified for working with three receivers and one
transmitter to calculate the co-ordinates. The transmitter
section only uses the trigger pin so as to send a pulse and the
receivers uses all trigger as well as echo to capture the
respective distances from each receiver to the transmitter.
These distances are used to calculate the co-ordinates.

Figure 2. Block diagram of arduino based 3D trilatration system for

modelling

The ultrasonic sensors are connected at 3 axes of the

coordinate system all connected to the centralized controller.
One of the sensors acting as the transmitter are separately
wired so that it is mobile. This is very important since the user
would use it for movement. Rest of the three sensors is
mounted on an „L‟ shaped stand acting as receivers. The
ultrasonic receiver captures the ultrasonic pulses sent by the Figure 3. Interfacing of ultrasonic sensor with arduino
ultrasonic transmitter. The data from this system is gathered All the connections are connected accordingly; it is then
via an embedded processor which will in turn process and simulated using Proteus. In figure 4, the connection diagram
provide real time output on the screen of the computer. This of the system is shown.
data is plotted using a program which is written to capture the
signal from the three receivers attached to the three ends of
the frame structure. The controller platforms we decided upon
is Arduino. It is easier to code and can be used to interface
any kind of sensors and peripherals. The data is plotted using
python program. The python code running on PC will provide
handshake signals with arduino uno after successfully
establishing serial connection. It sends signals when user
provides input on an intuitive GUI to arduino uno and listens
for the coordinates or data provided in return. It then plots the
received coordinates on a 3D plot using matplotlib library.
The program provides a useful easy to use GUI for interaction.
This is done using spyder IDE.
Arduino consists of 6 analog pins namely A0 to A5 and
14 digital pins D0 to D13.There are 2 power supply pins that
is 3V and 5V. The interfacing of ultrasonic sensor with
arduino is shown in figure 3. The ultrasonic sensor consists of
4 pins as Vcc, trigger, echo and ground. Trigger pin is an
Input pin. This pin has to be kept high for 10us to initialize
Figure 4. Connection diagram of arduino based 3D trilatration system in
measurement by sending the ultrasonic waves. Echo pin Proteus

www.ijltemas.in Page 358

 International Journal of Latest Technology in Engineering, Management & Applied Science (IJLTEMAS)
Volume VII, Issue IV, April 2018 | ISSN 2278-2540

The system is mounted on an „L‟ shaped stand with three IV. RESULTS
stationary ultrasonic receivers attached on the its vertices. The
The co-ordinates from arduino are taken via serial
ultrasonic transmitter is mobile and is free to move which acts
communication and these co-ordinates are then read by the
as pen for the 3D canvas system. The hardware is made on a
code written in python using spyder 2.5.5 IDE. These co-
wooden frame with a fixed distance between each ultrasonic
ordinates are then plotted using matplotlib library in python
receiver. Small holes are made to precisely fit the ultrasonic
making it work as a 3D canvas. The figure 6 shows the plotted
sensors on the 3 axes. The sensors are mounted on these holes.
co-ordinates on python.
The measurements regarding various positions of the sensors
from axes (dxz and dyz) are taken and at appropriate positions
at 30 cm and 45 cm for the sensors and are marked
accordingly.
The „L‟ shaped mount is fixed on a supporting platform.
The „L‟ shaped frame arrangement is shown in figure 5.

Figure 6 shows the plotted co-ordinates on python

V. CONCLUSION
This paper gives a simple approach to 3D trilatration using
arduino and ultrasonic sensors for the implementation of a 3D
canvas system. The system provides an easy way to draw
directly on a 3D canvas to generate design directly on screen
by plotting co-ordinates calculated by trilatration process
unlike the conventional method of drawing using a CAD
based software.
VI. FUTURE SCOPE
The system is slightly prone to noise as the movement of
hand is not that steady. This can be minimized in future by
various methods such as by taking mean of the point over
certain span or making a design modification on the system to
avoid interferences. Further the system can be made wireless
using ZigBee, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi modules and integrating it
with a professional 3D modelling tools like Maya, 3Dmax,
blender etc. and improving the working range of the system.

REFERENCES
[1]. D. E. Manolakis, "Efficient Solution and Performance Analysis of
Figure 5. Hardware arrangement of arduino based 3D trilatration system for 3-D Position Estimation by Trilateration", IEEE Transactions on
modelling. Aerospace and Electronic Systems, 1996.
[2]. F. Thomas, E. Ottaviano, L. Ros, M. Ceccarelli, "Coordinate-free
The software part of the system consists of IDE for Arduino formulation of a 3–2-1 wire-based tracking device using Cayley-
which is Arduino Studio for programming and compiling of Menger determinants", Sep 2003.
Arduino program. Another part of the software that deals with [3]. Hyun Chul Roh, Yungeun Choe, Jinyong Jung, " Position
the plotting of co-ordinates on pc will run on python program. estimation of landmark using 3D point cloud and trilateration
method “, Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence (URAI),
11th International Conference- 2014.

www.ijltemas.in Page 359

 International Journal of Latest Technology in Engineering, Management & Applied Science (IJLTEMAS)
Volume VII, Issue IV, April 2018 | ISSN 2278-2540

[4]. A.R. Jimenez, F. Seco, "Combining RSS-based Trilateration [5]. Tan-Sy Nguyen, Thai-Hoang Huynh, "Experimental study of
Methods with Radio-Tomographic Imaging: Exploring the trilateration algorithms for ultrasound-based positioning system on
Capabilities of Long-range RFID Systems", International QNX RTOS”, Real-time Computing and Robotics (RCAR), IEEE
Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN), International Conference, 2016
pp. 1-10, Oct 2015.

www.ijltemas.in Page 360