Cooperative localization for multiple mobile robots using constraints propagation techniques on intervals

This article describes a cooperative localization technique of multiple robots sharing position information of each robot. In case of conventional methods such as EKF, they need to linearization process. Consequently, they are not able to guarantee that their result is range containing true value. In this paper, we propose a method to merge the data of redundant sensors based on constraints propagation techniques on intervals. The proposed method has a merit guaranteeing true value. Especially, we apply the constraints propagation technique fusing wheel encoders, a gyro, and an inexpensive GPS receiver. In addition, we utilize the correlation between GPS data in common workspace to improve localization performance for multiple robots. Simulation results show that proposed method improve considerably localization performance of multiple robots.