Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) will unlock their true potential once they canoperate in groups. To this end, it is essential for them to estimate on-boardthe relative location of their neighbors. The challenge lies in limiting themass and processing burden needed to enable this. We developed a relativelocalization method that only requires the MAVs to communicate via theirwireless transceiver. Communication allows the exchange of on-board states(velocity, height, and orientation), while the signal-strength provides rangedata. These quantities are fused to provide a full relative location estimate.We used our method to tackle the problem of collision avoidance in tight areas.The system was tested with a team of AR.Drones flying in a 4mx4m area and withminiature drones of ~50g in a 2mx2m area. The MAVs were able to track theirrelative positions and fly several minutes without collisions. Ourimplementation used Bluetooth to communicate between the drones. This featuredsignificant noise and disturbances in signal-strength, which worsened as moredrones were added. Simulation analysis suggests that results can improve with amore suitable transceiver module.
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