An Adaptive Cooperative Localization Method for Heterogeneous Air-to-Ground Robots Based on Relative Distance Constraints in a Satellite-Denial Environment

Abstract

Cooperative localization (CL) for air-to-ground robots in a satellite-denial environment has become a current research hotspot. The traditional distance-based heterogeneous multiple-robot CL method requires at least four unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with known positions. When the number of known-position UAVs in a cluster collaborative network is insufficient, the traditional distance-based CL method has a certain inapplicability. A novel adaptive CL method for air-to-ground robots based on relative distance constraints is proposed in this paper. Based on a dynamically changing number of known-position UAVs in the cluster collaborative network, the adaptive fusion estimation threshold is set. When the number of known-position UAVs in the cluster cooperative network is large, the real-time dynamic topology characteristics of multiple robots’ spatial geometric configurations are considered. The optimal spatial geometric configuration between UAVs and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) is utilized to achieve a high-precision CL solution for UGVs. Otherwise, in the event that the number of known-position UAVs in a cluster collaborative network is insufficient, distance observation constraint information between UAVs and UGVs is retained in real time. Position observation equations for UGVs’ inertial navigation system (INS) have been constructed using inertial-based high-precision relative position constraints and relative distance constraints from historical to current times. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieves adaptive fusion estimation with a dynamically changing number of known-position UAVs in the cluster collaborative network, effectively verifying the effectiveness of the proposed method.