2025/06/18 by Giulio Delama, Delama, Giulio, Igor Borowski +5
Computer Science · Engineering · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #GNSS positioning and interference #Indoor and Outdoor Localization Technologies #Robotics (cs.RO) #Target Tracking and Data Fusion in Sensor Networks
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2506.15518
openalex publication_date 2025/06/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/19 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This paper presents a framework for the real-time initialization of unknown Ultra-Wideband (UWB) anchors in UWB-aided navigation systems. The method is designed for localization solutions where UWB modules act as supplementary sensors. Our approach enables the automatic detection and calibration of previously unknown anchors during operation, removing the need for manual setup. By combining an online Positional Dilution of Precision (PDOP) estimation, a lightweight outlier detection method, and an adaptive robust kernel for non-linear optimization, our approach significantly improves robustness and suitability for real-world applications compared to state-of-the-art. In particular, we show that our metric which triggers an initialization decision is more conservative than current ones commonly based on initial linear or non-linear initialization guesses. This allows for better initialization geometry and subsequently lower initialization errors. We demonstrate the proposed approach on two different mobile robots: an autonomous forklift and a quadcopter equipped with a UWB-aided Visual-Inertial Odometry (VIO) framework. The results highlight the effectiveness of the proposed method with robust initialization and low positioning error. We open-source our code in a C++ library including a ROS wrapper.