Distributed cooperative localization with lower communication path requirements

•The cross-covariance maintenance is well-organized in distributed manner.•The missing quantity of cross-covariance update is corrected.•One-way broadcast communication is enough for the proposed algorithm.•More alternative communication topologies are suitable for the proposed algorithm.

Free communication topology for cooperative localization cannot be guaranteed in real scenarios. A flexible distributed algorithm aiming at reducing communication path requirements is presented under EKF. In this algorithm, not all agents need to communicate with each other instantaneously for covariance update and it has no adverse effect on state update. We prove that the missed covariance update caused by communication absence can be exactly corrected when it is required. Additionally, we prove that this algorithm is adaptive to most available one-way communication topologies. The equivalent localization performance to free connection communication is achieved.