Localization of a Group of Communicating Vehicles by State Exchange

This paper considers the problem of cooperative localization of an heterogeneous group of road vehicles. Each vehicle can be equipped with proprioceptive and exteroceptive sensors enabling it to localize itself in its environment and also to localize (but not to identify) the other members of the group. Localization information can be exchanged between the vehicles through a wireless communication device. Every member of the group maintains (if possible) an estimation of the state of its environment and transmits it (if possible) to its neighbors. The global state of the environment is obtained by fusing the environment states of the vehicles. This fusion is based on extended Kalman filter where the poses of the detected vehicles are represented by a single system. The proposed approach takes into account the sensor constraints such as data unavailability and delays