The ability to accurately estimate the position of robotic agents relative to one another, in possibly GPS-denied environments, is crucial to execute collaborative tasks. Inter-agent range measurements are available at a low cost, due to technologies such as ultra-wideband radio. However, the task of three-dimensional relative position estimation using range measurements in multi-agent systems suffers from unobservabilities. This letter presents a sufficient condition for the observability of the relative positions, and satisfies the condition using a simple framework with only range measurements, an accelerometer, a rate gyro, and a magnetometer. The framework has been tested in simulation and in experiments, where 40-50 cm positioning accuracy is achieved using inexpensive off-the-shelf hardware.

中文翻译：

---

使用姿态耦合距离测量的多智能体系统中的相对位置估计


在可能无法使用 GPS 的环境中，准确估计机器人代理相对于彼此的位置的能力对于执行协作任务至关重要。借助超宽带无线电等技术，可以以较低的成本进行代理间距离测量。然而，在多智能体系统中使用距离测量进行三维相对位置估计的任务存在不可观测性。这封信提出了相对位置可观测性的充分条件，并使用仅具有距离测量、加速度计、速率陀螺仪和磁力计的简单框架来满足该条件。该框架已经过模拟和实验测试，使用廉价的现成硬件可实现 40-50 厘米的定位精度。