A strategy for heterogeneous multi-robot self-localization system

In this paper, We presented an indoor robot self-localization system which is composed of a ground robot and a flight robot. The ground robot is equipped with the laser range finder which can guarantee the ground robot able to get the two-dimensional coordinate information in real-time when it moves on the ground. There is a laser pointer installed on the ground robot which can project the linearity light pattern on the indoor ceiling´s plane. On the flight robot, there is a wireless webcam which can get the ceiling´s projection information. Then the obtained pictorial information will be send to the ground robot through the wireless transmission. In the next, the real-time 3D pose of flight robot is obtained by combining the visual localization results with the ground robot´s position. By this way, the system will achieve the heterogeneous multi robot´s independent localization. In this paper, we describe not only the self-localization system but also the strategy on which the two robots coordinate mutually. Simultaneously the method that obtains the real-time image pretreatment is introduced. The experimental results with both simulated and real image data are provided to demonstrate the feasibility of this strategy.