Using Constraint Propagation for Cooperative UAV Localization from Vision and Ranging

International audienceThis paper addresses the problem of cooperative localization in a group of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in a bounded error context. The UAVs are equipped with cameras to tracks landmarks, and a communication and ranging system to cooperate with their neighbours. Measurements are represented by intervals, and constraints are expressed on the robots poses (positions and orientations). Each robot first computes a pose domain using only its sensors measurements, by using set inversion via interval analysis [1]. Then, through position boxes exchange, positions are cooperatively refined by constraint propagation in the group. Results are presented with real robot data, and show position accuracy improvement thanks to cooperation