Multi-robot mobility enhanced hop-count based localization in ad hoc networks

The localization problem is important in mobile robots and wireless sensor network and has been studied for many years. Among many localization methods, the hop-count based approach is simple and scalable; however, the localization accuracy is not satisfactory if the node density is low. To solve this problem, in this paper a multi-robot approach is proposed to utilize the cooperation and mobility of the robots to improve the node distribution (density), thus enhancing the hop-count based localization. By an auction-based task allocation scheme, the robots can negotiate with the static sensor nodes and then select the most suitable robots to move to the area of sparse node density, thus increasing the localization accuracy for the static sensor nodes. On the other hand, the robots also can localize themselves with the help of the static sensor nodes. The efficacy of this approach is shown by simulation. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.