Gossip-Based Centroid and Common Reference Frame Estimation in Multiagent Systems

In this study, the decentralized common reference frame estimation problem for multiagent systems in the absence of any common coordinate system is investigated. Each agent is deployed in a 2-D space and can only measure the relative distance of neighboring agents and the angle of their line of sight in its local reference frame; no relative attitude measurement is available. Only asynchronous and random pairwise communications are allowed between neighboring agents. The convergence properties of the proposed algorithm are characterized, and its sensitiveness against additive noise on the relative distance measurements is investigated. An experimental validation of the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is provided.