TY - GEN
T1 - Land & Localize
T2 - 19th Annual International Conference on Distributed Computing in Smart Systems and the Internet of Things, DCOSS-IoT 2023
AU - Pourjabar, Mahyar
AU - Alkatheeri, Ahmed
AU - Rusci, Manuele
AU - Barcis, Agata
AU - Niculescu, Vlad
AU - Ferrante, Eliseo
AU - Palossi, Daniele
AU - Benini, Luca
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 IEEE.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Relative localization is a crucial functional block of any robotic swarm. We address it in a fleet of nano-drones characterized by a 10 cm-scale form factor, which makes them highly versatile but also strictly limited in their onboard power envelope. State-of-the-Art solutions leverage Ultra-WideBand (UWB) technology, allowing distance range measurements between peer nano-drones and a stationary infrastructure of multiple UWB anchors. Therefore, we propose an UWB-based infrastructure-free nanodrones swarm, where part of the fleet acts as dynamic anchors, i.e., anchor-drones (ADs), capable of automatic deployment and landing. By varying the ADs' position constraint, we develop three alternative solutions with different trade-offs between flexibility and localization accuracy. In-field results, with four flying mission- drones (MDs), show a localization root mean square error (RMSE) spanning from 15.3 cm to 27.8 cm, at most. Scaling the number of MDs from 4 to 8, the RMSE marginally increases, i.e., less than 10 cm at most. The power consumption of the MDs' UWB module amounts to 342mW. Ultimately, compared to a fixed-infrastructure commercial solution, our infrastructure-free system can be deployed anywhere and rapidly by taking 5.7 s to self-localize 4 ADs with a localization RMSE of up to 12.3% in the most challenging case with 8 MDs.
AB - Relative localization is a crucial functional block of any robotic swarm. We address it in a fleet of nano-drones characterized by a 10 cm-scale form factor, which makes them highly versatile but also strictly limited in their onboard power envelope. State-of-the-Art solutions leverage Ultra-WideBand (UWB) technology, allowing distance range measurements between peer nano-drones and a stationary infrastructure of multiple UWB anchors. Therefore, we propose an UWB-based infrastructure-free nanodrones swarm, where part of the fleet acts as dynamic anchors, i.e., anchor-drones (ADs), capable of automatic deployment and landing. By varying the ADs' position constraint, we develop three alternative solutions with different trade-offs between flexibility and localization accuracy. In-field results, with four flying mission- drones (MDs), show a localization root mean square error (RMSE) spanning from 15.3 cm to 27.8 cm, at most. Scaling the number of MDs from 4 to 8, the RMSE marginally increases, i.e., less than 10 cm at most. The power consumption of the MDs' UWB module amounts to 342mW. Ultimately, compared to a fixed-infrastructure commercial solution, our infrastructure-free system can be deployed anywhere and rapidly by taking 5.7 s to self-localize 4 ADs with a localization RMSE of up to 12.3% in the most challenging case with 8 MDs.
KW - indoor tracking
KW - nano-drone swarm
KW - on-board localization
KW - UAV
KW - ultra-wideband
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85174402444&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85174402444&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/DCOSS-IoT58021.2023.00104
DO - 10.1109/DCOSS-IoT58021.2023.00104
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85174402444
T3 - Proceedings - 19th International Conference on Distributed Computing in Smart Systems and the Internet of Things, DCOSS-IoT 2023
SP - 654
EP - 660
BT - Proceedings - 19th International Conference on Distributed Computing in Smart Systems and the Internet of Things, DCOSS-IoT 2023
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Y2 - 19 June 2023 through 21 June 2023
ER -