T. Ulm, J. Fisher, M. Spence
Waystone Technologies, Inc., North Carolina, United States
Keywords: Autonomous Systems, RPO, Contested Logistics,
METAL™ (Modulated Electromagnetic Tracking and Localization) is a novel sensing modality for short-range six-degree-of-freedom (6-DoF) relative pose estimation in environments where GPS, optical, RF, and LiDAR systems are unreliable or unavailable. Artificial Field Emitters (AFEs) generate uniquely coded magnetic fields that are decoded by compact receiver assemblies containing magnetometers, inertial sensors, and proprietary algorithms to determine precise relative position and orientation without line-of-sight. Laboratory testing demonstrated accurate position and stable attitude tracking that closely matched motion-capture ground truth, validating the feasibility of the approach at TRL 4. Unlike conventional localization technologies, METAL™ is resilient to lighting, dust, smoke, weather, obstructions, ambient magnetic interference, spoofing, and other challenging environmental conditions while supporting multiple simultaneous users from a single base station. Current development is focused on extending operational range beyond 20 meters and advancing flight-capable hardware. METAL™ has potential applications in spacecraft rendezvous and proximity operations, autonomous UxV systems, GPS-denied navigation, industrial robotics, autonomous mobile robots, and medical device localization, providing a robust localization capability where conventional sensing approaches fail.