A distributed relative localization approach for air-ground robot formations with onboard sensing

In a multi-robot system, diversity in the sensing and motion models of robotic entities can improve the overall performance. While such heterogeneous systems offer peculiar advantages in terms of robustness and resiliency, positioning and situational awareness of individual robots in these systems remain a challenge. In this paper, the problem of relative localization in a system composed of a drone and multiple unmanned ground vehicles which are desired to move in formation is addressed. By utilizing a leader–follower formation graph, a distance-based relative localization algorithm based on an extended Kalman filter is proposed for online estimation of the relative positions among the ground vehicles. The necessary conditions to satisfy the observability of the unmeasured states are provided. In the proposed framework, the robots exchange a limited amount of information only and do not rely on an external infrastructure, GPS, or magnetometer. Furthermore, an application of the proposed localization framework integrated to custom formation control schemes is proposed. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated through a set of simulation and real life experiments, and its advantages and limitations are discussed by means of a comparative study.