Efficient Planar Pose Estimation via UWB Measurements

Abstract

State estimation is an essential part of autonomous systems. Integrating the Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technique has been shown to correct the long-term estimation drift and bypass the complexity of loop closure detection. However, few works on robotics treat UWB as a stand-alone state estimation solution. The primary purpose of this work is to investigate planar pose estimation using only UWB range measurements. We prove the excellent property of a two-step scheme, which says we can refine a consistent estimator to be asymptotically efficient by one step of Gauss-Newton iteration. Grounded on this result, we design the GN-ULS estimator, which reduces the computation time significantly compared to previous methods and presents the possibility of using only UWB for real-time state estimation.