Implementation of a multi-drone system for UWB-based onboard localization with free structural anchors

Ultra-wideband (UWB) sensor-based localization systems have been widely used in various applications that require precise positioning. However, most existing localization systems in the literature have limited coverage areas due to the stationary anchors or ground control station (GCS)-based system. To address this limitation, this paper proposes a mobile UWB-based onboard localization system composed of multi-drones with free structural anchors. In this paper, we introduce the detailed hardware and software configuration of the proposed system, based on the robot operating system (ROS). Moreover, we present a modified multilateration method for real-time onboard localization, which improves the localization performance even in the case of coplanar anchors by adaptively adjusting the number of iterations based on the notion of innovation. Finally, the proposed system is verified through outdoor experiments, and the results are compared with existing localization methods.