Magnetic Navigation using Attitude-Invariant Magnetic Field Information for Loop Closure Detection

Indoor magnetic fields are a combination of Earth's magnetic field and disruptions induced by ferromagnetic objects, such as steel structural components in buildings. As a result of these disruptions, pervasive in indoor spaces, magnetic field data is often omitted from navigation algorithms in indoor environments. This paper leverages the spatially-varying disruptions to Earth's magnetic field to extract positional information for use in indoor navigation algorithms. The algorithm uses a rate gyro and an array of four magnetometers to estimate the robot's pose. Additionally, the magnetometer array is used to compute attitude-invariant measurements associated with the magnetic field and its gradient. These measurements are used to detect loop closure points. Experimental results indicate that the proposed approach can estimate the pose of a ground robot in an indoor environment within meter accuracy.

Invariant Extended Kalman Filtering Using Two Position Receivers for Extended Pose Estimation

This paper considers the use of two position receivers and an inertial measurement unit (IMU) to estimate the position, velocity, and attitude of a rigid body, collectively called extended pose. The measurement model consisting of the position of one receiver and the relative position between the two receivers is left invariant, enabling the use of the invariant extended Kalman filter (IEKF) framework. The IEKF possesses various advantages over the standard multiplicative extended Kalman filter, such as state-estimate-independent Jacobians. Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that the two-receiver IEKF approach yields improved estimates over a two-receiver multiplicative extended Kalman filter (MEKF) and a single-receiver IEKF approach. An experiment further validates the proposed approach, confirming that the two-receiver IEKF has improved performance over the other filters considered.