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.