A distributed map building approach for mobile robotic networks

The field of multi-robot systems is one of the main research topics in robotics, as robot networks offer great advantages in terms of reliability and efficiency in many application domains. This paper focuses on the problem of mutual localization and 3D cooperative environment mapping using a heterogeneous multi-robot team. The proposed algorithm relies on the exchange of local maps and is totally distributed; no assumption on a common reference frame is done. The developed strategy is robust to failures, scalable with the number of the robots in the network, and has been validated through an experimental campaign.