Vision-aided IMU estimation of attitude and orientation for a driverless car

Estimation of attitude and orientation is a critically important technique for ground wheeled autonomous robots like driverless cars. By means of attitude estimation, robots can not only evaluate the risk of overturning the vehicle, but also correct many sensor errors caused by robot motion or vibration. Traditionally, odometry (wheel encoders) is widely used to provide speed information for localization in dead-reckoning systems, and GPS fulfills the same role when robots navigate in outdoor environments. Visual odometry determines the position and orientation of a vehicle based on analyzing a sequence of images only.</p