Local reference filter for life-long vision aided inertial navigation

Filter based system state estimation is widely used for hard-realtime applications. In long-term filter operation the estimation of unobservable system states can lead to numerical instability due to unbounded state uncertainties. We introduce a filter concept that estimates system states in respect to changing local references instead of one global reference. In this way unbounded state covariances can be reset in a consistent way. We show how local reference (LR) filtering can be integrated into filter prediction to be used in square root filter implementations. The concept of LR-filtering is applied to the problem of vision aided inertial navigation (LR-INS). The results of a simulated 24 h quadrotor flight using the LR-INS demonstrate longterm filter stability. Real quadrotor flight experiments show the usability of the LR-INS for a highly dynamic system with limited computational resources

Slip Modeling and Estimation for a Planetary Exploration Rover: Experimental Results from Mt. Etna

For wheeled mobile systems, the wheel odometry is an important source of information about the current motion of the vehicle. It is used e.g. in the context of pose estimation and self-localization of planetary rovers, which is a crucial part of the success of planetary exploration missions. Depending on the wheel-soil interaction properties, wheel odometry measurements are subject to inherent errors such as wheel slippage. In this paper, a parameter-based approach for whole-body slip modeling and calibration is applied to a four-wheeled lightweight rover system. Details on the method for slip parameter calibration as well as the system-specific implementation are given. Experimental results from a test campaign on Mt. Etna are presented, showing significant improvements of the resulting wheel odometry measurements. The results are validated during a long range drive of approx. 900 m and discussed w. r. t. the advantages but also limitations of the method within a space exploration scenario