CREPES-X: Hierarchical Bearing-Distance-Inertial Direct Cooperative Relative Pose Estimation System
Relative localization is essential for cooperation in autonomous multi-robot systems. Existing approaches either rely on shared environmental features or inertial assumptions, or they degrade under pairwise non-line-of-sight conditions and outliers in complex environments. Robustly and efficiently fusing inter-robot bearings, distances, and inertial measurements for tens of robots remains challenging. We present CREPES-X (Cooperative RElative Pose Estimation System with multiple eXtended features), a hierarchical relative localization framework that enhances speed, accuracy, and robustness under challenging conditions, without requiring any global information. The hardware packs infrared (IR) LEDs, an IR camera, an ultra-wideband module, and an IMU into a cube no larger than $6\,\text{cm}$ on each side. On this hardware, a two-stage hierarchical estimator meets different latency, accuracy, and robustness requirements. The single-frame estimator returns instantaneous relative poses from a closed-form solution with bearing outlier rejection. The multi-frame estimator then refines these poses with IMU pre-integration under robocentric relative kinematics, using loosely- and tightly-coupled optimization. Extensive simulations and real-world experiments validate the effectiveness of CREPES-X, demonstrating robustness of up to $90\%$ bearing outliers, resilience in challenging conditions, and RMSE of $7.0\,\text{cm}$ and $2.2^\circ$ in real-world datasets.