Performance Evaluation of Coupling Between Vehicle Guidance and Vision Aided Navigation

D.T. Venable, J.L. Campbell, J. Kresge, D. Hooper, G. Peterson, M.J. Veth

Abstract:	Traditionally, vehicle navigation is implemented as a ‘feed-forward’ mechanism, where the navigation state vector is estimated through sensor derived measurements such as GPS psuedorange and carrier-phase measurements. This measured (or estimated) state vector is then used in a feed-forward fashion to the vehicle guidance and control systems. The above described technique works well in environments where the measurements provide good observability of the states and have relatively stationary statistics over the anticipated operational environment and independent of the vehicle dynamics as is the case with airborne GPS/INS integrated navigation systems. Recent research and testing conducted at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) on integrated vision/GPS/INS navigation systems designed to operate in both indoors and outdoors environments has shown that “classical” integrated navigation systems have the tendency to not perform optimally and can even diverge. The root of these ‘less than desired’ characteristics can be traced to the violation of the assumptions that the measurements provide observability and are stationary. This paper investigates methods to overcome challenges faced with the design of an integrated vision/GPS/INS navigation system through the coupling of the vehicle dynamic control with the navigation solution. Discussed are the benefits of creating an intelligent navigation system that can be aided by vehicle motion which is autonomously commanded in response to navigation solution quality. Tests were performed and results shown of a simple control behavior- the zero velocity update. Results show the benefits to navigation performance the inclusion of this behavior provides.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 22nd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2009) September 22 - 25, 2009 Savannah International Convention Center Savannah, GA
Pages:	826 - 834
Cite this article:	Venable, D.T., Campbell, J.L., Kresge, J., Hooper, D., Peterson, G., Veth, M.J., "Performance Evaluation of Coupling Between Vehicle Guidance and Vision Aided Navigation," Proceedings of the 22nd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2009), Savannah, GA, September 2009, pp. 826-834.
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