By enabling coordinated task execution and movement, robotic swarms can achieve efficient exploration or disaster site management. When utilizing Ultra-wideband (UWB) radio technology for ranging, the proposed relative localization sensor can be made lightweight and relatively indifferent to the ambient environment. Infrastructure dependency is eliminated by making the whole sensor fit on a swarm agent, while allowing for a certain amount of positional error. In this thesis, a novel algorithm is implemented in to constrained hardware and compared to a more traditional trilateration approach. Both algorithms utilize Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) to be more robust towards noise and achieves similar accuracy, but the proposed algorithm can run up to ten times faster. The antenna array which forms the localization sensor weighs only 56g, and achieves around 0.5m RMSE with a 10Hz update rate. Experiments show that the accuracy can be further improved if the rotational bias observed in the UWB devices are compensated for.

In recent years, the interest in flying multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in formation has increased. One challenging aspect of achieving this is the relative positioning within the swarm. This thesis evaluates two different methods for estimating the relative position and orientation between two fixed wing UAVs by fusing range measurements from Ultra-wideband (UWB) sensors and orientation estimates from Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs). To investigate the problem of estimating the relative position and orientation using range measurements, the performance of the UWB nodes regarding the accuracy of the measurements is evaluated. The resulting information is then used to develop a simulation environment where two fixed wing UAVs fly in formation. In this environment, the two estimation solutions are developed. The first solution to the estimation problem is based on the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and the second solution is based on Factor Graph Optimization (FGO). In addition to evaluating these methods, two additional areas of interest are investigated: the impact of varying the placement and number of UWB sensors, and if using additional sensors can lead to an increased accuracy of the estimates. To evaluate the EKF and the FGO solutions, multiple scenarios are simulated at different distances, with different amounts of changes in the relative position, and with different accuracies of the range measurements. The results from the simulations show that both solutions successfully estimate the relative position and orientation. The FGO-based solution performs better at estimating the relative position, while both algorithms perform similarly when estimating the relative orientation. However, both algorithms perform worse when exposed to more realistic range measurements. The thesis concludes that both solutions work well in simulation, where the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of the position estimates are 0.428 m and 0.275 m for the EKF and FGO solutions, respectively, and the RMSE of the orientation estimates are 0.016 radians and 0.013 radians respectively. However, to perform well on hardware, the accuracy of the UWB measurements must be increased. It is also concluded that by adding more sensors and by placing multiple UWB sensors on each UAV, the accuracy of the estimates can be improved. In simulation, the lowest RMSE is achieved by fusing barometer data from both UAVs in the FGO algorithm, resulting in an RMSE of 0.229 m for the estimated relative position.

Point cloud registration is a technique to align two sets of points with manifold applications across a range of industries. However, due to a lack of adequate sensing technology, this technique has seldom found applications in the automotive sector up to now. With the advent of solid-state Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors that are easily integrable in series production vehicles as means to sense the surrounding environment, this technique can be functional to automate their operations. Maneuvering a vehicle in the proximity of a reference object is one such operation, which can only be performed by accurately estimating its position and orientation relative to the vehicle itself. This project deals with the design and the implementation of an algorithm to accurately locate an aircraft parked on an airfield apron in real time. This is achieved by registering the point cloud model of the plane to the measurement point cloud of the scene produced by the LiDAR sensors on board the vehicle. To this end, the Iterative Closest Point (ICP) algorithm is a well-established approach to register two sets of points without prior knowledge of the correspondences between pairs of points, which, however, is notoriously sensitive towards outliers and computationally expensive with large point clouds. In this work, different variants are presented that improve on the standard ICP algorithm, in terms of accuracy and runtime performance, by leveraging different data structures to index the reference model and outlier rejection strategies. The results show that the implemented algorithms can produce estimates of centimeter precision in milliseconds based only on partial observations of the aircraft, outperforming another established solution tested. / Punktmolnregistrering är en teknik för att anpassa två uppsättningar punkter med mångfaldiga applikationer inom en rad branscher. På grund av bristen på adekvat sensorsteknik har denna teknik hittills sällan används inom automotivesektorn. Med tillkomsten av solid-state LiDAR -sensorer som enkelt kan integreras i serieproduktionsfordon för att kunna känna av den omgivningen, kan denna teknik automatisera verksamheten. Att manövrera ett fordon i närheten av ett referensobjekt är en sådan operation, som bara kan utföras genom att exakt uppskatta dess position och orientering i förhållande till själva fordonet. Detta projekt handlar om design och implementering av en algoritm för att exakt lokalisera ett flygplan parkerat på ett flygfält i realtid. Detta uppnås genom att registrera planetens molnmodell till mätpunktsmolnet på scenen som produceras av LiDAR -sensorerna ombord på fordonet. För detta ändamålet är Iterative Closest Point (ICP) -algoritmen ett väletablerat tillvägagångssätt för att registrera två uppsättningar punkter utan föregående kännedom om överensstämmelserna mellan parpar, vilket dock är notoriskt känsligt för avvikelser och beräknat dyrt med stora punktmoln. I detta arbete presenteras olika varianter som förbättrar standard ICP - algoritmen, när det gäller noggrannhet och runtime performance, genom att utnyttja olika datastrukturer för att indexera referensmodellen och outlier -avvisningsstrategier. Resultaten visar att de implementerade algoritmerna kan producera uppskattningar av centimeters precision i millisekunder baserat endast på partiella observationer av flygplanet, vilket överträffar en annan etablerad lösning som testats.