Zoran Sjanic

A Nonlinear Least-Squares Approach to the SLAM Problem

In this paper we present a solution to the simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) problem using a camera and inertial sensors. Our approach is based on the maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimate ...

Simultaneous navigation and SAR auto-focusing

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) equipment is an all-weather radar imaging system that can create high resolution images by means of utilising the movement of the flying platform. Accurate knowledge of the flown trajectory is essential in order to get focused images. Recently SAR systems are becoming more used on smaller and cheaper flying platforms like Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). Since UAVs in general have navigation systems with poorer performance than manned aircraft, the resulting images will inevitably be unfocused. At the same time, the unfocused images carry the information about the platforms trajectory that can be utilised. Here a way of using SAR images and their focus measure in a sensor fusion framework in order to simultaneously obtain both improved images and trajectory estimate is presented. The method is illustrated on a simple simulated example with promising results. Finally a discussion about the results and future work is given.

Direct prediction-error identification of unstable nonlinear systems applied to flight test data

Control system design for advanced, highly agile fighter aircraft, with unstable nonlinear aerodynamic characteristics, rely heavily on flight mechanical simulations. This makes the accuracy of the aerodynamic model in the simulators very important. Here, two methods for estimating parameters of nonlinear unstable systems where the control system is unknown are presented. Both approaches are direct prediction-error methods, either with a directly parametrized observer or with an Extended Kalman Filter as a predictor. These methods have been validated on simulated data, as well as on real flight test data and all approaches show promising results.

Simultaneous navigation and synthetic aperture radar focusing

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) equipment is a radar imaging system that can be used to create high-resolution images of a scene by utilizing the movement of a flying platform. Knowledge of the platforms trajectory is essential to get good and focused images. An emerging application field is real-time SAR imaging using small and cheap platforms where estimation errors in navigation systems imply unfocused images. This contribution investigates a joint estimation of the trajectory and SAR image. Starting with a nominal trajectory, we successively improve the image by optimizing a focus measure and updating the trajectory accordingly. The method is illustrated using simulations using typical navigation performance of an unmanned aerial vehicle. One real data set is used to show feasibility, where the result indicates that, in particular, the azimuth position error is decreased as the image focus is iteratively improved.

Navigation and SAR focusing with map aiding

A method for fusing synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images with optical aerial images is presented. This is done in a navigation framework, in which the absolute position and orientation of the flying platform, as computed from the inertial navigation system, is corrected based on the aerial image coordinates taken as ground truth. The method is suitable for new low-price SAR systems for small unmanned vehicles. The primary application is surveillance, and to some extent it can be applied to remote sensing, where the SAR image provides complementary information by revealing reflectivity to microwave frequencies. The method is based on first applying an edge detection algorithm to the images and then optimising the most important navigation states by matching the two binary images. To get a measure of the estimation uncertainty, we embed the optimisation in a least squares framework, in which an explicit method to estimate the (relative) size of the errors is presented. The performance is demonstrated on real SAR and aerial images, leading to an error of only a few pixels (around 4 m in our case), which is a quite satisfactory performance for applications like surveillance and navigation.

On orientation estimation using iterative methods in Euclidean space

This paper presents three iterative methods for orientation estimation. The first two are based on iterated Extended Kalman filter (IEKF) formulations with different state representations. The first is using the well-known unit quaternion as state (q-IEKF) while the other is using orientation deviation which we call IMEKF. The third method is based on nonlinear least squares (NLS) estimation of the angular velocity which is used to parametrise the orientation. The results are obtained using Monte Carlo simulations and the comparison is done with the non-iterative EKF and multiplicative EKF (MEKF) as baseline. The result clearly shows that the IMEKF and the NLS-based method are superior to q-IEKF and all three outperform the non-iterative methods.

Cellular Network Non-Line-of-Sight Reflector Localization Based on Synthetic Aperture Radar Methods

The dependence of radio signal propagation on the environment is well known, and both statistical and deterministic methods have been presented in the literature. Such methods are either based on randomised or actual reflectors of radio signals. In this work, we instead aim at estimating the location of the reflectors based on geo-localized radio channel impulse response measurements using methods from synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Radio channel measurements from 3GPP E-UTRAN have been used to verify the usefulness of the proposed approach. The obtained images show that the estimated reflectors are well-correlated with the aerial map of the environment. Also, trajectory segment contributions to different reflectors have been estimated with promising results.