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.