Master-Slave Cross-Domain Unmanned System Cooperative Localization in GNSS Denied Environment

The effectiveness of unmanned systems are seriously affected under GNSS denial environment. We present a cooperative localization strategy for ground-air cross-domain unmanned system formation based on master-slave architecture. The formation is composed by 1 UAV and 3 UGVs, and a UWB module is installed on each unmanned platform in the formation to enable distributed ranging. Firstly, the master UGV which configured a high precision IMU is positioned by dead reckoning. Secondly, the slaved UGVs which configured medium precision IMUs are cooperative positioned by an EKF fusion method between the range measurements with the master UGV and the dead reckoning of themselves. Thirdly, the UAV is positioned based on wireless ranging to the ground formation, and then fuses with the integrated sensors from flight control module. Finally, we verified the effectiveness of the master-slave cross-domain cooperative localization method for a UGV-UAV formation under field environment. The experiments showed that our method can effectively support the cross-domain unmanned system formation to obtain regional localization cooperatively. Moreover, the master UGV can be replaced by manned vehicle, which provides a feasible and high cost-effectiveness ratio solution for the manned/unmanned system collaborative application under GNSS denied scenario.