Cooperative localization using a foot-mounted inertial navigation system and ultrawideband ranging

Abstract

This paper aims to evaluate the performance gains that can be obtained by introducing cooperative localization in an indoor firefighter localization system, through the use of scenariobased simulations. Robust and accurate indoor localization for firefighters is a problem that is not yet resolved. Foot-mounted inertial navigation systems (INS) have been examined for first responder localization, but they have an accumulating position error that grows over time. By using ultrawideband (UWB) ranging between the firefighters and combining range measurements with position and uncertainty estimates from the foot-mounted INS via a cooperative localization approach it is possible to reduce the position error significantly.An error model for the position estimates received from single and dual foot-mounted INS is proposed based on experimental results, and it contains a scaling error which depends on the distance travelled and a heading error which grows linearly over time. The position error for dead-reckoning systems depends on the type of movement. Similarly, an error model for the UWB range measurements was designed where the range measurements experience a bias and variance, which is determined by the number of walls between the transmitter and receiver.By implementing these error models in a scenario-based simulation environment it is possible to evaluate the performance gain of different cooperative localization algorithms. A centralized extended Kalman Filter (EKF) algorithm has been implemented, and the position accuracy and heading improvements are evaluated over a smoke diving operation scenario. The cooperative localization scheme reduces the position errors by up to 70% in a scenario where a three-person smoke diver team performs a search and rescue operation.

Robust Navigation of UAV using Inertial Sensors Aided by UWB and RTK GPS

“…In the following, the bias and standard deviation will be considered constant, as in Ref. 15. Furthermore, only line-of-sight (LOS) operation will be considered.…”

“…15 where position and heading of smoke divers equipped with IMU and UWB was estimated. Other previous work include Ref.…”

An algorithm for real-time restructuring of a ranging-based localization network

“…The range measurement based localization is also used in multi-agent cooperative positioning and wireless sensor network [9]- [13]. The main idea is to localize several agents (or wireless sensor nodes) with the capability of exchanging their information (i.e.…”

Cooperative relative positioning of mobile users by fusing IMU inertial and UWB ranging information

“…Due to the mobility of the sensor nodes, cooperative relative positioning by fusing IMU and ranging information attracts more and more attentions [10] [11] [18] [19] [20]. Authors in [20] consider the relative positioning of two mobile robots under ideal ranging and motion measurement.…”

“…However, their approach can not correct the positioning error after the initialization stage. Authors in [10] used an extended Kalman filter to implement a cooperative localization system for firefighters by fusing UWB and IMU information in a decentralized way. The fusion is done in each sensor unit, which additionally requires users to communicate with each other to share its state in order to incorporate the ranging measurements.…”