Consistent data association in multi-robot systems with limited communications

Abstract

In this paper we address the data association problem of features observed by a robot team with limited communications. At every time instant, each robot can only exchange data with a subset of the robots, its neighbors. Initially, each robot solves a local data association with each of its neighbors. After that, the robots execute the proposed algorithm to agree on a data association between all their local observations which is globally consistent. One inconsistency appears when chains of local associations give rise to two features from one robot being associated among them. The contribution of this work is the decentralized detection and resolution of these inconsistencies. We provide a fully decentralized solution to the problem. This solution does not rely on any particular communication topology. Every robot plays the same role, making the system robust to individual failures. Information is exchanged exclusively between neighbors. In a finite number of iterations, the algorithm finishes with a data association which is free of inconsistent associations. In the experiments, we show the performance of the algorithm under two scenarios. In the first one, we apply the resolution and detection algorithm for a set of stochastic visual maps. In the second, we solve the feature matching between a set of images taken by a robotic team.