Augmenting Inertial Navigation with Image-Based Motion Estimation

Numerous upcoming NASA misions need to land safely and precisely on planetary bodies. Accurate and robust state estimation during the descent phase is necessary. Towards this end, we have developed a new approach for improved state estimation by augmenting traditional inertial navigation techniques with image-based motion estimation (IBME). A Kalman filter that processes rotational velocity and linear acceleration measurements provided from an IMU has been enhanced to accomodate relative pose measurements from the IBME. In addition to increased state estimation accuracy, IBME convergence time is reduced while robustness of the overall approach is improved. The methodology is described in detail and experimental results with a 5DOF gantry testbed are presented.