Recent significant advances in the Global Positioning System (GPS) have
contributed to making real-time kinematic/dynamic process for decimetre
to centimetre-level positioning more reliable and ready for the
production-use. As a result of research and development efforts in this
area, a robust real-time kinematic (RTK) GPS positioning prototype
system has been established at QUT for both scientific and engineering
purposes. This system is finding applications in a wide range of
automobile robots or automatic guidance vehicle systems. This paper first summarises the theoretical basis necessary for
centimetre real-time kinematic positioning, then gives a brief description
for the real-time dynamic GPS system developed at QUT. The paper
summarises the results of a designed vehicle tracking test. The results
demonstrated that the differences between RTK filtering solutions and
OTF solutions are in the order of magnitude of about 20 centimetres and
the accuracy of OTF solutions are in the levels of two centimetres. This
confirms that the RTK system delivers three-dimensional position with
decimetre-to-centimetre accuracy. This particular RTK processing system
is robust and reliable, although the system is referred to as a prototype and
will be further developed.