Wang, Bingyu (Texas A&M University), Rathinam, Sivakumar (Texas A & M University), Sharma, Rajnikant (University of Cincinnati)

Landmark Placement for Cooperative Localization and Routing of Unmanned Vehicles

Scheduled for presentation during the Regular Session "Path Planning I" (WeA1), Wednesday, June 12, 2019, 11:20−11:40, Heritage B

2020 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), June 11-14, 2019, Athens, Greece

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on April 25, 2024

Abstract

A majority of the routing algorithms for unmanned vehicles rely on Global Positioning System (GPS) information for localization. However, disruption of GPS signals, by intention or otherwise, can render these algorithms ineffective. Known landmark information can aid localization in GPS-denied environments and cooperative localization can add more benefits to multiple vehicles. As resource constraints usually exist in practical applications, this article provides a way to optimally place additional landmarks to aid cooperative localization. Specifically, given a fleet of vehicles, a set of targets and a set of pre-planned paths for each of the vehicles, we aim to optimally place landmarks such that each of the vehicles can estimate its position and orientation by obtaining relative measurement information from at least two landmarks, and the landmark placement cost is minimized. Based on the relative position measurement graph, an integer linear program and its relaxations are presented. The performance of the proposed methodology is evaluated and compared through extensive simulation results.