Robot-to-Robot Relative Pose Estimation From Range Measurements

In this paper, we address the problem of determining the 2D relative pose of pairs of communicating robots from (i) robot-to-robot distance measurements and (ii) displacement estimates expressed in each robot's reference frame. Specifically, we prove that for nonsingular configurations the minimum number of distance measurements required for determining all 6 possible solutions for the 3 degrees-of-freedom robot-torobot transformation is 3. Additionally, we show that given 4 distance measurements the maximum number of solutions is 4, while 5 distance measurements are sufficient for uniquely determining the robot-to-robot transformation. Furthermore, we present an efficient algorithm for computing the unique solution in closed form and describe an iterative least-squares process for improving its accuracy. Finally, we derive necessary and sufficient observability conditions based on Lie derivatives, and evaluate the performance of the proposed estimation algorithms both in simulati...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: TROB
• Authors: Xun S. Zhou, Stergios I. Roumeliotis
• Keywords: 2D Relative Pose, Degrees-of-freedom Robot-torobot Transformation, Distance Measurements, TROB 2008