Jianan Zhu

Papers

Total Citations

126

H-Index

About

Jianan Zhu is a leading researcher in decentralized multi-agent cooperative localization, with a focus on infrastructure-free navigation for first responders and exploring robots. Their work addresses the critical challenge of enabling accurate global positioning for groups of mobile agents when GPS is unavailable, using ultra-wideband (UWB) inter-agent ranging combined with dead-reckoning. Zhu’s most influential contribution, the 2019 paper "Cooperative Localization Under Limited Connectivity" (82 citations), introduced two decentralized algorithms that maintain filter consistency without explicit inter-agent state estimate correlations, significantly reducing communication costs. Building on this, their 2021 study (42 citations) developed a robust solution handling both line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight UWB ranging conditions, achieving decimeter-level accuracy in real-world environments. Zhu’s 2020 work further advanced this by proposing an interacting multiple model (IMM) approach to seamlessly switch between LOS and NLOS conditions. Their research has profound implications for emergency response, autonomous exploration, and swarm robotics, where reliable localization under constrained communication and challenging environmental conditions is paramount.