Optimal Robot Formations: Balancing Range-Based Observability and User-Defined Configurations
<|reference_start|>Optimal Robot Formations: Balancing Range-Based Observability and User-Defined Configurations: This paper introduces a set of customizable and novel cost functions that enable the user to easily specify desirable robot formations, such as a ``high-coverage'' infrastructure-inspection formation, while maintaining high relative pose estimation accuracy. The overall cost function balances the need for the robots to be close together for good ranging-based relative localization accuracy and the need for the robots to achieve specific tasks, such as minimizing the time taken to inspect a given area. The formations found by minimizing the aggregated cost function are evaluated in a coverage path planning task in simulation and experiment, where the robots localize themselves and unknown landmarks using a simultaneous localization and mapping algorithm based on the extended Kalman filter. Compared to an optimal formation that maximizes ranging-based relative localization accuracy, these formations significantly reduce the time to cover a given area with minimal impact on relative pose estimation accuracy.<|reference_end|>
@article{ahmed2024optimal,
    title={Optimal Robot Formations: Balancing Range-Based Observability and
  User-Defined Configurations},
    author={Syed Shabbir Ahmed, Mohammed Ayman Shalaby, Jerome Le Ny, James
  Richard Forbes},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.00988},
    year={2024},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={2403.00988},
    primaryClass={cs.RO}
}