Low-cost collaborative localization for large-scale multi-robot systems

Large numbers of collaborating robots are advantageous for solving distributed problems. In order to efficiently solve the task at hand, the robots often need accurate localization. In this work, we address the localization problem by developing a solution that has low computational and sensing requirements, and that is easily deployed on large robot teams composed of cheap robots. We build upon a real-time, particle-filter based localization algorithm that is completely decentralized and scalable, and accommodates realistic robot assumptions including noisy sensors, and asynchronous and lossy communication. In order to further reduce this algorithm´s overall complexity, we propose a low-cost particle clustering method, which is particularly well suited to the collaborative localization problem. Our approach is experimentally validated on a team of ten real robots.