Cooperative localization between small UAVs using a combination of heterogeneous sensors

Abstract

A small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) cannot be equipped with many sensors for target localization since it suffers drawbacks such as payload weight limit. However, such a shortcoming could be resolved by allocating sensors to multiple small UAVs through an information-sharing strategy. While many literatures have extensively studied cooperative maneuver with homogeneous sensors, cooperation of heterogeneous sensors (bearing-only and range-only sensors) has not been fully analyzed yet. Hence, this paper examines analytically and numerically characteristics of two UAVs, one with a bearing-only sensor and the other with a range-only sensor. This study shows that the resultant behavior differs considerably from that of cooperative maneuvers with homogeneous sensors. (C) 2012 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.