Low-Cost Multi-Robot Localization

Localization is an enabling technology, and a prerequisite for a wide range of robotic tasks. Despite the large amount of work already done in this domain, to date, the solution to the localization problem for fully decentralized, large-scale multi-robot systems is still an open question. In this chapter, we contribute to this particular problem outline by proposing a low-cost method: we describe a fully decentralized algorithm, particularly designed for resource-limited robotic platforms in large-scale systems. In the following sections, we elaborate the components of our method, and demonstrate the utility of our low-cost localization algorithm on groups of up to ten real mobile robots. This chapter is rounded off by bringing our approach into a larger perspective, and by discussing its potential as well as its limitations.