Research Progress on Collaborative Perception and Localization Technologies of Clustered Unmanned Systems in Underground Sheltered Spaces: A Survey

Underground sheltered spaces, such as utility tunnels, mines, and railways, are characterized by unique features including enclosure, complexity, and structural diversity, which present great challenges to collaborative perception and localization in clustered unmanned systems. This article first analyzes the current research on clustered unmanned systems in underground spaces. Second, considering the challenges of communication limitation, degraded environments, and constrained perception in underground spaces, this article elaborates on the progress of key technologies for collaborative localization and perception in unmanned systems, including data exchange methods for robotic cluster under communication constraints, robust and resilient simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithms under degraded environments, collaboration strategies for heterogeneous multirobot systems in underground environments, and collaborative semantic SLAM under limited environmental perception. Finally, the technological bottlenecks and development trends of clustered unmanned systems in underground environments are summarized and discussed.