Ground Vehicle Navigation Based on the Skylight Polarization

Guillaume Courtier, Pierre-Jean Lapray, Ronan Adam, Sébastien Changey, Jean-Philippe Lauffenburger

Abstract:	Abstract—Autonomous or unmanned ground vehicles can take advantage of camera-based navigation systems. These navigation systems mainly rely on standard radiometric cameras. The use of polarization information, such as captured by a polarization filter array camera, is a potential extension to capture multimodal information efficiently. In this communication, we propose a navigation method that relies exclusively on Stokes images reconstructed from polarization camera data. For this purpose, an image processing pipeline is employed to estimate the heading of a vehicle. To assess the method, an acquisition card has been built and coupled with two moving platforms: a rotary stage and a moving ground vehicle. The results show that, in a dynamic car experiment, the root mean square error of the orientation is 4.29? as compared to a Global Positioning System/Inertial Navigation System. Index Terms—Polarization vision, Polarization cameras, Image understanding, Navigation, Ground vehicle
Published in:	2023 IEEE/ION Position, Location and Navigation Symposium (PLANS) April 24 - 27, 2023 Hyatt Regency Hotel Monterey, CA
Pages:	1373 - 1379
Cite this article:	Courtier, Guillaume, Lapray, Pierre-Jean, Adam, Ronan, Changey, Sébastien, Lauffenburger, Jean-Philippe, "Ground Vehicle Navigation Based on the Skylight Polarization," 2023 IEEE/ION Position, Location and Navigation Symposium (PLANS), Monterey, CA, April 2023, pp. 1373-1379. https://doi.org/10.1109/PLANS53410.2023.10140044
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