Terrain Elevation Aided Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping in Aerial Platforms

Accurate and precise navigation for aerial platforms is not possible in Global Positioning System denied environment. Several methods to aid Inertial Navigation System have been proposed and used to cope with this problem. Simultaneous localization and mapping is one of the most popular among these. The main idea behind visual simultaneous localization and mapping is to estimate errors which exist on navigation outputs and landmark position predictions by using position differences of landmarks, which their position on the ground are unknown previously, in consecutive frames. The fundamental problem occurs in visual simultaneous localization and mapping is depth ambiguity due to 2-dimensional imaging. In this study, visual simultaneous localization and mapping where prediction of depth information is done by aid of terrain elevation information is explained.