LIDAR/MEMS IMU integrated navigation (SLAM) method for a small UAV in indoor environments

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) based on LIDAR and MEMS IMU is a kind of autonomous integrated navigation technology. It can provide attitude, velocity position for a small UAV in an indoor frame during the outage of GNSS. A method of integrating the measurements from a LIDAR and a MEMS IMU was proposed in the paper. LIDAR measurements are a set of ranges and scan angles. The angle rates and accelerations from MEMS IMU are used to drive the simplified strapdown INS equations. The first step of the method is environment features extracting from the measurements of LIDAR and constructing a feature map. Then, the model of errors of LIDAR measurement due to the change of the scan plane during the attitude manoeuver is established and compensated based on aiding information from MEMS INS and the assumption about the structural indoor environment. The relative position parameters derived from environmental features delay matching algorithm and the differences of measurements of LIDAR at adjacent times are used to estimate the error of MEMS INS and MEMS sensors by a Kaiman Filter. A LIDAR/MEMS IMU prototype was designed to verify the practicability of the integrated navigation system of LIDAR and MEMS IMU. Some experiments were carried out in a room and the results demonstrated the potential use of the LIDAR/MEMS IMU integration navigation system.