Aiming to improve the navigation accuracy during global navigation satellite system (GNSS) outages, an algorithm based on long short-term memory (LSTM) is proposed for aiding inertial navigation system (INS). The LSTM algorithm is investigated to generate the pseudo GNSS position increment substituting the GNSS signal. Almost all existing INS aiding algorithms, like the multilayer perceptron neural network (MLP), are based on modeling INS errors and INS outputs ignoring the dependence of the past vehicle dynamic information resulting in poor navigation accuracy. Whereas LSTM is a kind of dynamic neural network constructing a relationship among the present and past information. Therefore, the LSTM algorithm is adopted to attain a more stable and reliable navigation solution during a period of GNSS outages. A set of actual vehicle data was used to verify the navigation accuracy of the proposed algorithm. During 180 s GNSS outages, the test results represent that the LSTM algorithm can enhance the navigation accuracy 95% compared with pure INS algorithm, and 50% of the MLP algorithm.

Visual navigation systems are susceptible to complex environments, while inertial navigation systems (INS) are not affected by external factors. Hence, we present IC-GVINS, a robust, real-time, INS-centric global navigation satellite system (GNSS)-visual-inertial navigation system to fully utilize the INS advantages. The Earth rotation has been compensated in the INS to improve the accuracy of high-grade inertial measurement units (IMUs). To promote the system robustness in high-dynamic conditions, the precise INS information is employed to assist the feature tracking and landmark triangulation. With a GNSS-aided initialization, the IMU, visual, and GNSS measurements are tightly fused in a unified world frame within the factor graph optimization framework. Dedicated experiments were conducted in the public vehicle and private robot datasets to evaluate the proposed method. The results demonstrate that IC-GVINS exhibits superior robustness and accuracy in complex environments. The proposed method with the INS-centric architecture yields improved robustness and accuracy compared to the state-of-the-art methods.

In filtering-based global navigation satellite system (GNSS) / inertial navigation system (INS) integrated navigation systems, the precise INS mechanization has fully considered the impact of the Earth rotation, Coriolis acceleration, etc. However, most inertial measurement unit (IMU) preintegration models in factor graph optimization (FGO)-based integrated navigation systems are rough and ignore these factors. We propose an FGO-based GNSS/INS integrated navigation system to analyze and evaluate the impact of the Earth rotation on MEMS-IMU preintegration. The proposed FGO-based integration is based on a refined IMU preintegration, in which the Earth rotation is compensated. The proposed GNSS/INS integration is a sliding-window optimizer in which the GNSS positioning and the IMU preintegration are tightly fused within the FGO framework. The simulated GNSS outage in field tests, an effective method, is adopted to evaluate the IMU preintegration quantitatively. The results demonstrate that the refined IMU preintegration can achieve the same accuracy as the precise INS mechanization. In contrast, the rough IMU preintegration and INS mechanization without compensating for the Earth rotation yields notable accuracy degradation. When the GNSS-outage time is 60 seconds, the degradation can be 200% for the industrial-grade MEMS module and more than 10% for the consumer-grade MEMS chip. Besides, the degradation can be more significant if the GNSS-outage time is longer. The proposed FGO-based GNSS/INS integration ( https://github.com/i2Nav-WHU/OB_GINS ) and the employed datasets ( https://github.com/i2Nav-WHU/awesome-gins-datasets ) are open-sourced on GitHub.

Accurate measurement of the railway track geometry is a task of fundamental importance to ensure the track quality in both the construction phase and the regular maintenance stage. Conventional track geometry measuring trolleys (TGMTs) in combination with classical geodetic surveying apparatus such as total stations alone cannot meet the requirements of measurement accuracy and surveying efficiency at the same time. Accurate and fast track geometry surveying applications call for an innovative surveying method that can measure all or most of the track geometric parameters in short time without interrupting the railway traffic. We provide a novel solution to this problem by integrating an inertial navigation system (INS) with a geodetic surveying apparatus, and design a modular TGMT system based on aided INS, which can be configured according to different surveying tasks including precise adjustment of slab track, providing tamping measurements, measuring track deformation and irregularities, and determination of the track axis. TGMT based on aided INS can operate in mobile surveying mode to significantly improve the surveying efficiency. Key points in the design of the TGMT’s architecture and the data processing concept and workflow are introduced in details, which should benefit subsequent research and provide a reference for the implementation of this kind of TGMT. The surveying performance of proposed TGMT with different configurations is assessed in the track geometry surveying experiments and actual projects.