Hi

Firstly I'd like to apologize if this is not in the right section of this forum (I'm new here), and also that this is sort of only indirectly a Linux related issue.

I'm currently doing a robotics project using a P3DX robot from Mobile Robots, that is running Debian Linux. My project is focused on autonomous navigation/simultaneous localization and mapping using stereovision, with the eventual aim of relying solely on the stereo cameras as the means of sensing the robot's external environment. However, to develop the algorithms to do this, it would be good to have some other means of determining the robot's position and heading to begin with to provide a ground truth to determine the accuracy of the algorithms. Although GPS and INS units are available for this robot, they are expensive and my supervisor is not particularly keen on buying anything like this in the immediate future.

Would it be possible to write a C++ program that could run on the robot's computer to extract position and heading data at regular intervals (once per second or so) from an iPhone 4 connected via ssh using the robot's wifi? This data would be stored in a text file along with other data produced by the robot.

I understand that this is probably quite an advanced problem, but if anyone could offer some advice on how to do this it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for any replies.