Precise Localization And Formation Control For Swarm Robots Via Wireless Sensor Network

Precise localization has always been a fundamental and vital problem for swarm robots to perform their tasks. Aiming at overcoming the limited individual perception and the difficulty of achieving precise localization and formation, we propose a solution with both efficiency and practicability in this paper. An iterative multidimensional scaling (MDS) technique and two kinds of wireless sensor networks (WSN), i.e., a ZigBee WSN and a radio frequency identification (RFID) system of electronic tag floors, are combined to achieve accurate localization and auxiliary formation control.A primary position estimation is obtained with dead reckoning method and RSSI information using data fusion by Kalman filter. Iterative MDS algorithm is utilized to obtain the topology of the robot swarm, i.e., relative positions of all the robots. The robots maintain their formation with the knowledge of each other’s relative position. RFID is used as reference in the following coordinate transformation and calibration process. The advantages of this method are that the initial point of iteration process is optimized and reference nodes are acquired in an efficient and reliable way. Both of the simulation results and the experimental results on a real schematic system are given to demonstrate the success of the proposed approach.