Navigation in GPS Denied Environments: Feature-Aided Inertial Systems

Abstract

This paper focuses on the latest technology trends for navigating in difficult urban, indoor, and underground environments where typical Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers do not function. The latest alternative navigation (Alt-Nav) technologies based on electro-optical techniques are described. These techniques extract features from electro-optical images (for example, a point feature associated with a corner of a building or a line associated with a wall of an indoor hallway) and then utilize those features as navigation related landmarks to enable aiding of inertial navigation system (INS). The Alt-Nav technologies presented include optically-aided INS and Ladar-aided INS. Tightly integrating these technologies with an INS should lead to navigation performance similar to that is achieved in today s GPS/INS integrations. An Alt-Nav integration vision for the future is given with some example configurations that improve overall navigation system robustness.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2010
Accession Number
ADA581023

Entities

People

  • Andrey Soloviev
  • Jimmy E. Touma
  • John Raquet
  • Maarten Uijt De Haag
  • Michael Veth
  • Mikel M. Miller
  • Timothy J. Klausutis

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Sensors
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Aircrafts
  • Collision Avoidance
  • Dead Reckoning
  • Detection
  • Detectors
  • Feature Extraction
  • Images
  • Inertial Measurement Units
  • Inertial Navigation
  • Inertial Navigation Systems
  • Kalman Filters
  • Laser Radar
  • Navigation
  • Optical Detectors
  • Three Dimensional
  • Two Dimensional

Readers

  • Computer Vision.
  • Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Technology.
  • Sensor Fusion and Tracking Systems.

Technology Areas

  • Space