On-board Range-based Relative Localization for Micro Aerial Vehicles in indoor Leader-Follower Flight

TL;DR

This paper introduces a range-based indoor relative localization method for MAVs that does not rely on magnetometers, enabling leader-follower flights using only onboard sensors and UWB technology.

Contribution

The work removes the dependency on common heading measurements, improving robustness and enabling accurate indoor MAV leader-follower navigation with only onboard sensors.

Findings

Successful indoor leader-follower flights with MAVs using UWB range measurements.

Localization accuracy achieved without magnetometer data.

Followers maintained close proximity to the leader throughout flights.

Abstract

We present a range-based solution for indoor relative localization by Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs), achieving sufficient accuracy for leader-follower flight. Moving forward from previous work, we removed the dependency on a common heading measurement by the MAVs, making the relative localization accuracy independent of magnetometer readings. We found that this restricts the relative maneuvers that guarantee observability, and also that higher accuracy range measurements are required to rectify the missing heading information, yet both disadvantages can be tackled. Our implementation uses Ultra Wide Band, for both range measurements between MAVs and sharing their velocities, accelerations, yaw rates, and height with each other. We used this on real MAVs and performed leader-follower flight in an indoor environment. The follower MAVs could follow the leader MAV in close proximity for the entire durations of the flights. The followers were autonomous and used only on-board sensors to track and follow the leader.