Cooperative Positioning System with Multiple Robots.

Abstract

A number of positioning identification techniques have been used for mobile robots. Dead reckoning is a popular method, but is not reliable when a robot travels long distance or over an uneven surface because of variations in wheel diameter and wheel slippage. The landmark method, which estimates the current position relative to landmarks, cannot be used in an uncharted environment. This paper proposes a new method called"Cooperative Positioning System (CPS) ."For CPS, we divide the robots into two groups, A and B. One group, say A, remains stationary and acts as a landmark while group B moves. The moving group B then stops and acts as a landmark for group A. This process is repeated until the target robot position is reached. CPS has a far lower accumulated positioning error than dead reckoning, and can work in three-dimensions which is not possible with dead reckoning. Also, this method has inherent landmarks and therefore works in uncharted environments. This paper gives the basic consideration on positioning accuracy of CPS, and reports the positioning experiments by the constructed robots with CPS.