TITLE:
Correction of Inertial Navigation System’s Errors by the Help of Video-Based Navigator Based on Digital Terrarium Map
AUTHORS:
Oleg Yurjevich Kupervasser, Alexander Alexandrovich Rubinstein
KEYWORDS:
Video-Based Navigator; Digital Terrarium Map; Autonomous Vehicles; Inertial Navigation
JOURNAL NAME:
Positioning,
Vol.4 No.1,
February
28,
2013
ABSTRACT: This paper deals with the error analysis of a novel
navigation algorithm that uses as input the sequence of images acquired
from a moving camera and a Digital Terrain (or Elevation) Map (DTM/DEM). More
specifically, it has been shown that the optical flow derived from two
consecutive camera frames can be used in combination with a DTM to estimate the
position, orientation and ego-motion parameters of the moving camera. As
opposed to previous works, the proposed approach does not require an
intermediate explicit reconstruction of the 3D world. In the present work the
sensitivity of the algorithm outlined above is studied. The main sources for
errors are identified to be the optical-flow evaluation and computation, the
quality of the information about the terrain, the structure of the observed
terrain and the trajectory of the camera. By assuming appropriate
characterization of these error sources, a closed form expression for the
uncertainty of the pose and motion of the camera is first developed and then
the influence of these factors is confirmed using extensive
numerical simulations. The main conclusion of this paper is to establish that
the proposed navigation algorithm generates accurate estimates for
reasonable scenarios and error sources, and thus can be effectively used as
part of a navigation system of autonomous vehicles.