Analysis of cooperative localisation performance under varying sensor qualities and communication rates

Cooperative Localisation (CL) is a robust technique used to improve localisation accuracy in multi-robot systems. However, there is a lack of research on how CL performs under different conditions. It is unclear when CL is worthwhile, and how CL performance is affected if the system changes. This information is particularly important for systems with robots that have limited power and processing, which cannot afford to constantly perform CL. This paper investigates CL under varying sensor qualities (position accuracy, yaw accuracy, sample rate), communication rates, and number of robots for both homogeneous and heterogeneous multi-robot systems. Trends are found in MATLAB simulations using the UTIAS dataset, and then validated on Kobuki robots using an OptiTrack-based system. We find that yaw accuracy has a substantial effect on performance, a communication rate that is too fast can be detrimental, and heterogeneous systems are greater candidates for cooperative localisation than homogeneous systems.