Honeywell International Inc.
ACTIVE GIMBAL STABILIZED AERIAL VISUAL-INERTIAL NAVIGATION SYSTEM

Abstract:

A vehicle navigation system can acquire a plurality of images with a camera; determine at least one feature in one or more image of the plurality of images; reduce, via image feature tracking, a rotational noise associated with a motion of the camera in the one or more images; determine one or more keyframes based on the one or more images with reduced rotational noise; determine an optical flow of one or more of the plurality of images based on the one or more keyframes; determine a predicted depth of the at least one feature based on the optical flow; determine a pose and a motion of the camera based on the optical flow and the predicted depth of the at least one feature; and determine a first pose and a first motion of the vehicle based on the determined pose and motion of the camera and gimbal encoder information.