Adaptive Decentralized Cooperative Localization for Firefighters Based on UWB and Autonomous Navigation

Abstract

Cooperative localization (CL) is a popular research topic in the area of localization. Research is becoming more focused on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and robots and less on pedestrians. This is because UAVs and robots can work in formation, but pedestrians cannot. In this study, we develop an adaptive decentralized cooperative localization (DCL) algorithm for a group of firefighters. Every member maintains a local filter and estimates the position and the relative measurement noise covariance is estimated rather than a fixed value. We derived the explicit expressions for the inter-member collaboration instead of using approximations. This method reduces the influence of non-line-of-sight (NLOS) errors in the ultra-wideband (UWB) ranging on the CL, eliminating the need for fixed UWB anchors. The proposed algorithm was validated by two experiments designed in the building and forest environments. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm improved the accuracy of localization, and the proposed algorithm suppressed the localization errors by 14.23% and 47.01% compared to the decentralized cooperative localization extended Kalman filter (DCLEKF) algorithm, respectively.

Keywords

• inertial navigation
• cooperative localization
• adaptive extended Kalman filter
• UWB ranging
• multi-sensor fusion