Cooperative localization algorithm for multiple mobile robot system in indoor environment based on variance component estimation

The Multiple Mobile Robot (MMR) cooperative system is becoming a focus of study in various fields due to its advantages, such as high efficiency and good fault tolerance. However, the uncertainty and nonlinearity problems severely limit the cooperative localization accuracy of the MMR system. Thus, to solve the problems mentioned above, this manuscript presents a cooperative localization algorithm for MMR systems based on Cubature Kalman Filter (CKF) and adaptive Variance Component Estimation (VCE) methods. In this novel algorithm, a nonlinear filter named CKF is used to enhance the cooperative localization accuracy and reduce the computational load. On the other hand, the adaptive VCE method is introduced to eliminate the effects of unknown system noise. Furthermore, the performance of the proposed algorithm is compared with that of the cooperative localization algorithm based on normal CKF by utilizing the real experiment data. In addition, the results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms the CKF cooperative localization algorithm both in accuracy and consistency.