Analysis on Multi-robot Relative 6-DOF Pose Estimation Error Based on UWB Range

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the errors in relative 6-DOF pose estimation for multi-robot systems using UWB in GNSS-denied environments, providing bounds and insights for system deployment.

Contribution

It offers an analytical lower bound for pose estimation error and investigates factors affecting accuracy through simulation, aiding system parameter optimization.

Findings

Analytical lower bound for position and orientation error.

Impact of node distance, altitude, and tag configuration on accuracy.

Simulation results verify the analytical analysis.

Abstract

Relative pose estimation is the foundational requirement for multi-robot system, while it is a challenging research topic in infrastructure-free scenes. In this study, we analyze the relative 6-DOF pose estimation error of multi-robot system in GNSS-denied and anchor-free environment. An analytical lower bound of position and orientation estimation error is given under the assumption that distance between the nodes are far more than the size of robotic platform. Through simulation, impact of distance between nodes, altitudes and circumradius of tag simplex on pose estimation accuracy is discussed, which verifies the analysis results. Our analysis is expected to determine parameters (e.g. deployment of tags) of UWB based multi-robot systems.