# UWB/LiDAR Fusion For Cooperative Range-Only SLAM

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.02854 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.02854/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 7 Nov 2018.

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Open-World Distributed Robot Self-Localization with Transferable Visual Vocabulary and Both Absolute and Relative Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.04569/) (2021)
- [Multi-Robot Relative Pose Estimation in SE(2) with Observability Analysis: A Comparison of Extended Kalman Filtering and Robust Pose Graph Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15313/) (2024)
- [Dynamic-Dark SLAM: RGB-Thermal Cooperative Robot Vision Strategy for Multi-Person Tracking in Both Well-Lit and Low-Light Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12768/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We equip an ultra-wideband (UWB) node and a 2D LiDAR sensor a.k.a. 2D laser rangefinder on a mobile robot, and place UWB beacon nodes at unknown locations in an unknown environment. All UWB nodes can do ranging with each other thus forming a cooperative sensor network. We propose to fuse the peer-to-peer ranges measured between UWB nodes and laser scanning information, i.e. range measured between robot and nearby objects/obstacles, for simultaneous localization of the robot, all UWB beacons, and LiDAR mapping. The fusion is inspired by two facts: 1) LiDAR may improve UWB-only localization accuracy as it gives a more precise and comprehensive picture of the surrounding environment; 2) on the other hand, UWB ranging measurements may remove the error accumulated in the LiDAR-based SLAM algorithm. Our experiments demonstrate that UWB/LiDAR fusion enables drift-free SLAM in real-time based on ranging measurements only.