Terrain-Aided Navigation Using a Point Cloud Measurement Sensor

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Şanlan, Abdülbaki, Erol, Fatih, Abu-Khalaf, Murad, Koyuncu, Emre
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914080260882432
author Şanlan, Abdülbaki
Erol, Fatih
Abu-Khalaf, Murad
Koyuncu, Emre
author_facet Şanlan, Abdülbaki
Erol, Fatih
Abu-Khalaf, Murad
Koyuncu, Emre
contents We investigate the use of a point cloud measurement in terrain-aided navigation. Our goal is to aid an inertial navigation system, by exploring ways to generate a useful measurement innovation error for effective nonlinear state estimation. We compare two such measurement models that involve the scanning of a digital terrain elevation model: a) one that is based on typical ray-casting from a given pose, that returns the predicted point cloud measurement from that pose, and b) another computationally less intensive one that does not require raycasting and we refer to herein as a sliding grid. Besides requiring a pose, it requires the pattern of the point cloud measurement itself and returns a predicted point cloud measurement. We further investigate the observability properties of the altitude for both measurement models. As a baseline, we compare the use of a point cloud measurement performance to the use of a radar altimeter and show the gains in accuracy. We conclude by showing that a point cloud measurement outperforms the use of a radar altimeter, and the point cloud measurement model to use depends on the computational resources
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_06470
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Terrain-Aided Navigation Using a Point Cloud Measurement Sensor
Şanlan, Abdülbaki
Erol, Fatih
Abu-Khalaf, Murad
Koyuncu, Emre
Systems and Control
Robotics
We investigate the use of a point cloud measurement in terrain-aided navigation. Our goal is to aid an inertial navigation system, by exploring ways to generate a useful measurement innovation error for effective nonlinear state estimation. We compare two such measurement models that involve the scanning of a digital terrain elevation model: a) one that is based on typical ray-casting from a given pose, that returns the predicted point cloud measurement from that pose, and b) another computationally less intensive one that does not require raycasting and we refer to herein as a sliding grid. Besides requiring a pose, it requires the pattern of the point cloud measurement itself and returns a predicted point cloud measurement. We further investigate the observability properties of the altitude for both measurement models. As a baseline, we compare the use of a point cloud measurement performance to the use of a radar altimeter and show the gains in accuracy. We conclude by showing that a point cloud measurement outperforms the use of a radar altimeter, and the point cloud measurement model to use depends on the computational resources
title Terrain-Aided Navigation Using a Point Cloud Measurement Sensor
topic Systems and Control
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06470