Bounding Visual Odometry Drift With Radio Range Data for Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Robert C. Leishman, Jeremy Gray, John Raquet, Adam Rutkowski, and Wil Myrick

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	Vision-aided navigation for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is a well-researched topic. Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) information is valuable and used on a routine basis, however having multiple methods of obtaining navigation information for small UAVs is desirable. One popular method of utilizing vision information for UAV navigation is that of Visual Odometry (VO), even though without additional aides, position drift is unbounded for this approach. This study investigates the amount of additional information that is required to bound the position drift for a UAV that is using a VO algorithm at the heart of its navigation solution. The proposed method is to utilize a pair of ranging radios between a GNSS denied UAV navigating with VO and another UAV that has access to good GNSS information, giving it a known location. A flight test recreating this scenario was performed in July 2017 and the data are used to demonstrate the proposed concept. In addition to test data, an analytic observability analysis is presented.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 31st International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2018) September 24 - 28, 2018 Hyatt Regency Miami Miami, Florida
Pages:	2364 - 2379
Cite this article:	Leishman, Robert C., Gray, Jeremy, Raquet, John, Rutkowski, Adam, Myrick, Wil, "Bounding Visual Odometry Drift With Radio Range Data for Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles," Proceedings of the 31st International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2018), Miami, Florida, September 2018, pp. 2364-2379. https://doi.org/10.33012/2018.15952
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