A 3D Range-Only SLAM Algorithm Based on Improved Derivative UKF

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Hi, congratulation on successfully submitting "A 3D Range-Only SLAM Algorithm based on Improved Derivative UKF" to this journal. This paper discussed the 3D-Range-Only SLAM algorithm with UWB sensors with a focus on reducing the computation burden. However, I found a few deficits that authors should address more clearly. 

1. Line 45 - 49, the author claims that application to the 3D is insufficient, results are still in the simulation stage, and applications are restricted on UGV with several papers from ten years ago as a reference. However, many publications applied UWB on UAV and have been tested both indoor and outdoor environments. The author can search in Google Scholar with keywords "UWB, UAV" to check the result. I think the author's claims here are inappropriate, and more new research progress related to UWB in last 5 years needs to be discussed.
2. Another main deficit here is that the author only compared performance between proposed methods and UKF methods in simulation and real experiments. The author could consider testing more methods (such as EKF based methods), then the results and conclusion will be more convicing.
3. The author didn't explain how to get the ground truth from the real experiment.
4. As proposed method is a SLAM method which means it can generate location and map info, but the map result is missed in the context.

Based on the problems mentioned above, I recomand a major revision.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper describes a method for simultaneous localization and mapping based on range measurements of UWB nodes. 

The main concerns are as follows:

1. The employed methods are not novel, including derivative UKF and SVD decomposition replacing Cholesky decomposition. So, the technical contribution of this paper is limited to experimental setup and data.
2. The presentation quality of the paper is not sufficient. The English language usage is poor, some sentences do not make sense, e.g. "Compensation of robust". Many typos are present, including "cholsky", "noisen", "prposed".
3. In Fig. 4 and subsequent figures, the nodes are denoted as "sign".
4. In Section 5, page 13, the authors state that "we found that the ranging information of the tag 2 has some non-Gaussian noise". However, no evidence is provided for this statement.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for the author's great works. The paper looks good now.

Reviewer 2 Report

The reviewers addressed all comments made in the previous report. The English usage improved after the proofreading. 

Minor remark: he word "node" in the figures appears in a different font than the rest of the words in the figures. This should be fixed.