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Cooperative localization and evaluation of small-scaled spherical underwater robots

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Abstract

With the goal of supporting localization requirements of our spherical underwater robots, such as multi robot cooperation and intelligent biological surveillance, a cooperative localization system of multi robot was designed and implemented in this study. Given the restrictions presented by the underwater environment and the small-sized spherical robot, an time of flight camera and microelectro mechanical systems (MEMS) sensor information fusion algorithm using coordinate normalization transfer models were adopted to construct the proposed system. To handle the problem of short location distance, limited range under fixed view of camera in the underwater environment, a MEMS inertial sensor was used to obtain the attitude information of robot and expanding the range of underwater visual positioning, the transmission of positioning information could implement through the normalization of absolute coordinate, then the positioning distance increased and realized the localization of multi robot system. Given the environmental disturbances in practical underwater scenarios, the Kalman filter model was used to minimizing the systematic positioning error. Based on the theoretical analysis and calculation, we describe experiments in underwater to evaluate the performance of cooperative localization. The experimental results confirmed the validity of the multi robot cooperative localization system proposed in this paper, and the distance of cooperative localization system proposed in this paper is larger than the visual positioning system we have developed previously.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation funded project (2018M631290). This research project was also partly supported by Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (no. IRT_16R07), the Importation and Development of High-Caliber Talents Project of Beijing Municipal Institutions (no. IDHT20170510).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing Engineering Research Center of Optoelectronic Information and Instruments, Beijing Information Science and Technology University, Beijing, China

    Yanlin He, Lianqing Zhu & Guangkai Sun

  2. Bionic and Intelligent Equipment Lab, Beijing Information Science and Technology University, Beijing, China

    Yanlin He, Lianqing Zhu & Guangkai Sun

  3. Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China

    Junfei Qiao

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  1. Yanlin He
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  2. Lianqing Zhu
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  3. Guangkai Sun
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  4. Junfei Qiao
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Correspondence to Lianqing Zhu.

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He, Y., Zhu, L., Sun, G. et al. Cooperative localization and evaluation of small-scaled spherical underwater robots. Microsyst Technol 25, 573–585 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-018-4014-z

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