Development of an Italian low cost GNSS/INS system universally suitable for mobile mapping

The first studies for the mobile mapping and creation of a vehicle for this kind of research was carried out by Canadian Researchers in the 1980s. Since then, these vehicles have been widely employed in several applications (road cadastre maps, terrestrial photogrammihetry, road sign recognition, etc.) for both commercial and research purposes throughout the world. Many GNSSIINS vehicles which can be equipped in different ways with one or more GPS, inertial sensors, and one or several cameras, have been realized. A characteristic shared by most of these devices concerns the high costs of the sensors, of the realization and of the maintenance. For this reason, a GNSSIINS system, that is suitable for any vehicle, made up of low cost devices (two GPS receivers, an INS, and a camera rigidly placed on a metallic bar), has been designed and built by our research group. Two tests run at different velocities have been carried out to evaluate the reliability of the system. After a presentation of the system, the differences that were witnessed during the application of these calibration methods are explained herein.     

GNSS/INS深组合技术研究进展与展望

在GNSS/INS组合导航领域,深组合是最深层次的组合方式,随着航空、航天、军事等应用对导航系统性能要求的提升,深组合技术逐步成为国内外研究的重点。通过对GNSS/INS深组合的技术起源与结构发展过程的梳理,总结出当前对深组合概念理解的两种立场。按照接收机环路跟踪结构与信息处理方式不同,将深组合结构分为标量深组合、相干矢量深组合以及非相干矢量深组合3种类型,其中相干矢量深组合又可以分为级联式和集中式两种结构。综述了国内外深组合技术的研究现状并指出了当前研究中存在的问题,最后结合实际应用需求对深组合的发展进行了展望。     

惯导/北斗/里程计一体化紧组合导航方法研究

当前,主要通过采用惯导/卫星导航组合或者惯导/里程计组合的方式来实现 车辆的定位定向;卫星信号良好时,惯导系统与卫星导航组合实现车辆定位定向,当卫 星导航信号不好甚至没有信号无法正常工作时,惯导系统与里程计组合实现车辆定位定 向。提出一种惯导/卫星导航/里程计三者的一体化组合方案,针对惯导、北斗、里程计 这三项测量设备构成的组合系统建立了统一的误差状态模型、组合量测模型以及反馈修 正模型,并通过卡尔曼滤波器来实现三者的一体化紧组合,这种惯导/北斗/里程计一体 化的紧组合方式,能更好地实现三者信号之间的充分交流与融合。将这种一体化紧组合 方法与传统的惯导/北斗组合、惯导/里程计组合方法进行了仿真比较,结果表明：惯导/ 北斗/里程计一体化的紧组合方法能更加快速、准确得到传感器误差（ 包含惯组误差、 北斗误差、里程计误差）的在线估计,更能有效提高各传感器的测量精度。     

Enhanced space integrated GPS/INS (SIGI)

Safe, reliable, and low cost space-based navigation is being provided with embedded INS/GPS systems such as the space integrated GPS/INS (SIGI). The SIGI is being used for various space vehicle applications such as launch vehicles, orbital vehicles, and re-entry vehicles. This paper describes current space vehicle navigation capabilities. The SIGI is being enhanced to provide additions to these existing capabilities with such items as higher processing and a commercial-off-the-shelf operating system. This will allow hosting of various software applications such as advanced navigation functions, flight control, guidance and vehicle management algorithms. The SIGI can host redundancy management functions by incorporating a cross channel data link card (CCDL) using a high speed firewire bus. The SIGI can then be used as a redundancy management platform which has application to current space vehicle avionics topologies incorporating distributed processing architectures     

New low cost avionics with INS/GPS for a variety of vehicles

Development of a new vehicle avionics suite is described, including integration of a low-cost, tightly-coupled integrated Inertial Navigation System/Global Positioning System (INS/GPS) to support vehicle guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C). A wide variety of next-generation low-cost launch vehicles could potentially benefit from integrated INS/GPS technology for GN&C and/or range safety applications. Coleman Aerospace Company (CAC) has developed a new low-cost avionics suite, the generic Integrated Mission Guidance & Tracking System (IMGTS), an open architecture, modular system that supports the requirements for various guidance applications and range safety tracking. As part of this development, Boeing North American, Inc. is supplying its Modular Miniature Integrated GPS/INS Tactical System (M-MIGITS^TM) Military-Off-The-Shelf (MOTS) INS/GPS product to support CAC's IMGTS GN&C     

小型无人机的导航与制导仿真系统研究

研究了基于飞行器动力学模型的小型无人机的惯性组合导航与制导系统仿真技术,组合导航系统嵌入了飞行器的轨迹和姿态控制回路,建立了基于MATLAB/AEROSIM的组合导航计算机仿真系统,仿真系统包括惯性组合导航仿真模块、传感器仿真支持模块、飞行器6自由度动力学模型模块、飞行器轨迹生成、轨迹控制与姿态控制模块、导航仿真评估模块。基于该仿真系统,目前已开展惯性/卫星深组合、惯性/大气数据融合等理论算法和技术研究。     

Online INS/GPS integration with a radial basis function neural network

Most of the present navigation systems rely on Kalman filtering to fuse data from global positioning system (GPS) and the inertial navigation system (INS). In general, INS/GPS integration provides reliable navigation solutions by overcoming each of their shortcomings, including signal blockage for GPS and growth of position errors with time for INS. Present Kalman filtering INS/GPS integration techniques have some inadequacies related to the stochastic error models of inertial sensors, immunity to noise, and observability. This paper aims to introduce a multi-sensor system integration approach for fusing data from INS and GPS utilizing artificial neural networks (ANN). A multi-layer perceptron ANN has been recently suggested to fuse data from INS and differential GPS (DGPS). Although being able to improve the positioning accuracy, the complexity associated with both the architecture of multi-layer perceptron networks and its online training algorithms limit the real-time capabilities of this technique. This article, therefore, suggests the use of an alternative ANN architecture. This architecture is based on radial basis function (RBF) neural networks, which generally have simpler architecture and faster training procedures than multi-layer perceptron networks. The INS and GPS data are first processed using wavelet multi-resolution analysis (WRMA) before being applied to the RBF network. The WMRA is used to compare the INS and GPS position outputs at different resolution levels. The RBF-ANN module is then trained to predict the INS position errors and provide accurate positioning of the moving platform. Field-test results have demonstrated that substantial improvement in INS/GPS positioning accuracy could be obtained by applying the combined WRMA and RBF-ANN modules.     

Rapid development of tightly-coupled GPS/INS systems

This paper addresses the question: “Why aren't tightly-coupled OPS/INS systems everywhere, on aircraft, ships and land vehicles?” Two barriers to the widespread use are cited. One is the high cost of the INS, and the other is the cost and complexity of tightly-coupled OPS/INS integration. One of those two barriers has recently been diminished drastically with the development of a standardized software package for tightly-coupled integration. In the past, only the largest corporations have been able to pay the initial development cost for tightly-coupled OPS/INS integration, usually with funding from a large defense program. Using the new software package, integration and van test can be accomplished in a matter of days, and this has been demonstrated with field trials. The package is intended primarily for small companies that otherwise would not be able to build tightly-coupled OPS/INS systems at all. What would have been a prohibitive 3- or 4-man year development effort is reduced to a few man weeks. To accomplish an integration, the system integrator has to find a way, through serial interfaces or by some other means, to get the INS measurements of acceleration (accumulated velocity change ΔV) and attitude rate (accumulated angle change Δ&thetas;) into a processor, along with the raw data of a GPS receiver. He also has to find a way to time tag the INS ΔV, Δ&thetas; with GPS time. The rest of tightly-coupled OPS/INS integration is predominately accomplished in the standardized software package. That leaves the cost of the INS as the only remaining barrier to the very widespread use of OPS/INS, and invites new development of low cost inertial sensors. The focus of this paper is on the software package, and how it achieves standardization and ease of use while retaining the flexibility to produce optimal results with a variety of INS and GPS receiver types     

基于场景检测的城市环境GNSS/INS组合定位方法研究

城市复杂环境下,采用GNSS/INS组合定位方法能有效提升GNSS信号部分或全部被遮挡情况下的车辆连续定位能力。GNSS信号受遮挡的程度具有随机性和突变性,给GNSS/INS组合算法的架构设计和参数设置带来了挑战。基于此,设计了一套基于场景检测的GNSS/INS组合定位策略与方法,提出了以多星GNSS观测量的八类特征为输入,利用支持向量机分类思想将定位场景分为室外开阔、室外遮挡和室内三种类型,并建立了与之相适应的组合滤波量测误差估计模型,进而实现了GNSS/INS组合定位。实测数据验证表明,提出的方法能够有效提升车辆组合定位精度。     

基于可观测度分析和增量因子图的多源融合导航方法

复杂动态场景下高精度导航定位是自主无人系统决策规划与控制执行的基础。在城市峡谷、隧道、地下或室内停车场等场景下，卫星信号弱甚至丢失，严重影响了惯性/卫星/视觉等多源融合导航的精度和可靠性。为主动适应动态场景变化，迫切需要设计一种适用于跨场景的多源融合导航系统。基于动态时变系统的可观测度分析，在线度量惯性/卫星、惯性/视觉等组合导航因子的可信程度，进而采用因子图融合导航框架，根据各组合导航因子的可信程度，主动优化因子构建和增量平滑过程，以实现多传感器自适应融合导航与可靠定位。实验仿真表明：基于可观测度分析方法，能够在线优化因子图计算过程，提升了多源融合导航系统的环境适应性和跨场景能力，保证了复杂动态场景下自主无人系统跨场景导航模式切换和连续可靠的导航定位。     

Fuzzy corrections in a GPS/INS hybrid navigation system

A new concept regarding GPS/INS integration, based on artificial intelligence, i.e. adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) is presented. The GPS is used as reference during the time it is available. The data from GPS and inertial navigation system (INS) are used to build a structured knowledge base consisting of behavior of the INS in some special scenarios of vehicle motion. With the same data, the proposed fuzzy system is trained to obtain the corrected navigation data. In the absence of the GPS information, the system will perform its task only with the data from INS and with the fuzzy correction algorithm. This paper shows, using Matlab simulations, that as long as the GPS unavailability time is no longer than the previous training time and for the scenarios a priori defined, the accuracy of trained ANFIS, in absence of data from a reference navigation system, is better than the accuracy of stand-alone INS. The flexibility of model is also analyzed.     

部分模糊度固定方法在GNSS/INS紧组合中的应用研究

针对动态环境下GNSS/INS导航定位模糊度固定难的问题,提出了一种基于部分模糊度固定的GNSS/INS紧组合导航定位算法,通过选择模糊度的最优子集进行固定,并利用实测车载实验进行了算法验证.实验结果表明:在开阔环境下,基于部分模糊度固定的GNSS/INS紧组合与基于全模糊度固定的GNSS/INS紧组合算法的定位精度相当,均为厘米级,但是使用部分模糊度固定算法可以有效地提升模糊度固定率;在城市环境下,基于部分模糊度固定的算法明显优于基于全模糊度固定的算法,前者东向精度提升了8％、北向精度提升了31％、天向精度提升了60％,且模糊度固定率提升了21.8％.     

GPS／INS组合导航系统松、紧耦合性能比较

对GPS/INS组合导航系统的紧耦合算法进行了理论推导。详细分析了当INS元器件性能变差时,GPS/INS组合导航系统在不同耦合模式下的定位精度变化规律,得出采用紧耦合模式的组合导航系统比一般的松耦合方式能获得更好的定位精度;并通过仿真验证了该结论的正确。     

基于惯性/偏振光/光流的六足步行机器人自主导航方法研究

针对惯性/卫星组合导航系统易受干扰或自主性不足等问题，引入偏振光传感器和光流传感器，分别建立航向角和速度量测方程，以辅助惯性导航系统，提出了一种基于惯性/偏振光/光流的自主导航方法。同时，为实现惯性传感器、偏振光传感器和光流传感器等多传感器的融合，设计了无迹Kalman滤波器。为验证该方法的有效性，以六足步行机器人为对象开展仿真和实验验证。结果表明，在没有卫星信号源的情况下，仅依靠机器人自身感知，可实现较高精度的机器人位姿估计，实现了不依赖于卫星导航信号的自主导航，提升了导航系统的自主性。     

基于强跟踪滤波的GPS/INS组合导航系统对准技术研究

针对卡尔曼滤波鲁棒性较差的问题,研究了基于强跟踪滤波方法的GPS/INS对准。建立了GPS/INS组合导航系统对准的误差模型,对机载装备系统进行GPS/INS组合导航系统的对准仿真分析,验证该方案的可行性及强跟踪滤波器的性能。仿真结果表明,采用强跟踪滤波能够根据残差的变化求出渐消因子,能够在机动过程中有效跟踪系统状态量,从而提高对准精度和速度。采用强跟踪滤波的GPS/INS组合导航系统对准技术可以保证对准的快速性及对准精度,对工程应用具有重要的参考价值。     

GPS/BDS/INS tightly coupled integration accuracy improvement using an improved adaptive interacting multiple model with classified measurement update

An Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is commonly used to fuse raw Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) measurements and Inertial Navigation System (INS) derived measurements. However, the Conventional EKF (CEKF) suffers the problem for which the uncertainty of the statistical properties to dynamic and measurement models will degrade the performance. In this research, an Adaptive Interacting Multiple Model (AIMM) filter is developed to enhance performance. The soft-switching property of Interacting Multiple Model (IMM) algorithm allows the adaptation between two levels of process noise, namely lower and upper bounds of the process noise. In particular, the Sage adaptive filtering is applied to adapt the measurement covariance on line. In addition, a classified measurement update strategy is utilized, which updates the pseudorange and Doppler observations sequentially. A field experiment was conducted to validate the proposed algorithm, the pseudorange and Doppler observations from Global Positioning System (GPS) and BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) were post-processed in differential mode. The results indicate that decimeter-level positioning accuracy is achievable with AIMM for GPS/INS and GPS/BDS/INS configurations, and the position accuracy is improved by 35.8%, 34.3% and 33.9% for north, east and height components, respectively, compared to the CEKF counterpart for GPS/BDS/INS. Degraded performance for BDS/INS is obtained due to the lower precision of BDS pseudorange observations.     

Road profile recognition for autonomous car navigation and Navstar GPS support

We discuss autonomous car navigation based on updating dead reckoning (DR) by road profile recognition (RPR). The navigation system requires sensors to detect changes in altitude and driving direction which are installed in modern cars for different purposes (e.g. ABS sensors). The layout of the navigation system is discussed and simulations are carried out over driving distances of approximately 150 km on the basis of realistic road data and ordinary sensor accuracies. Positioning errors of lower than 10 m (standard deviation) are observed. To achieve this accuracy the synchronization error between measured and mapped data must be continually estimated. The introduced navigation method is ideal to complete present commercial car navigation systems using Navstar GPS.     

A relative navigation system for formation flight

A relative navigation system based on both the Inertial Navigation System (INS) and the Global Positioning System (GPS) is developed to support situational awareness during formation flight. The architecture of the system requires an INS/GPS integration across two aircraft via a data link. A fault-tolerant federated filter is used to estimate the relative INS errors based on relative GPS measurements and a range measurement obtained from the data link. The filter is constructed based on a reduced-order model of the relative INS error process. A method for analyzing the filter performance is presented. A case involving two helicopters in formation flight is studied under three different night trajectories to account for the effect of vehicle motion on the INS state transition matrix. The results of the covariance analysis are compared with actual night results over an instrumented test range.     

Design and Development of a Real-Time DSP and FPGA-Based Integrated GPS-INS System for Compact and Low Power Applications

Emphasis of the present work is on an elegant real-time solution for GPS/INS integration. Micro-electro mechanical system (MEMS) based inertial sensors are light but not accurate enough for inertial navigation system (INS) applications. An integrated INS/GPS system provides better accuracy compared with either INS or GPS, used individually. This paper describes an improved design and fabrication of a loosely coupled INS-GPS integrated system. The systems currently available use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and are, therefore, not optimized for compact, single supply, and low power requirements. In the proposed system, a digital signal processor (DSP) is used for inertial navigation solution and Kalman filter computations. A field programmable gate array (FPGA) is used for creating an efficient interface of the GPS with the DSP. Direct serial interface of the GPS involve tedious processing overhead on the navigation processor. Therefore, a universal asynchronous receiver transmitter (UART) and dual port random axis memory (DPRAM) are created on the FPGA itself. This also reduces the total chip count, resulting in a compact system. The system is designed to give real time processed navigation solutions with an update rate of 100 Hz. All the details of this work are presented.     

基于地标信息的车载惯导姿态修正技术

惯导与速率计构成的组合系统是机动作战车辆较常使用的自主定位定向系统,其惯导姿态精度将直接影响组合定位精度。文章利用车辆运动途中的地标信息,讨论了车载惯导姿态误差估计与修正技术,通过仿真分析了地标位置与车辆零速信息在惯导姿态修正过程中的作用。结果表明：利用地标信息是进行车载惯导姿态修正较为实用的途径,在此基础上可以有效提高车载惯导／速率计组合定位系统的精度。