Inertial Navigation System aiding using vision

The aiding of an INS using measurements over time of the line of sight of ground features as they come into view of an onboard camera is investigated. The objective is to quantify the reduction in the navigation states´ errors by using bearings-only measurements over time of terrain features in the aircraft´s field of view. INS aiding is achieved through the use of a special Kalman Filter designed for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). The design of the SLAM Kalman Filter is presented and it is shown that during a long range, wings level cruising flight at constant velocity and altitude, a significant reduction in the aided INS-calculated navigation state errors compared to a free INS, is possible.