Multiple vehicle cooperative localization under random finite set framework

This paper presents a new multiple vehicle cooperative localization approach based on Random Finite Set (RFS) theory. Assuming vehicles are equipped with proprioceptive and exteroceptive sensors to localize the positions, a solution based on RFS statistics is therefore proposed to consider the whole group behavior instead of each vehicle. For this, we rely on Probability Hypothesis Density (PHD) filtering. Compared to other methods, our approach presents a recursive filtering algorithm that provides dynamic estimation of multiple vehicle states. The proposed method addresses the current challenges in multiple vehicle cooperative localization domain such as communication bandwidth issue, data association uncertainty and the over-convergence problem. A comparative study based on simulations demonstrates the reliability and the feasibility of the proposed approach in large scale environments.