INS/Vision Integrated Navigation System Based on a Navigation Cell Model of the Hippocampus

Considering the error accumulation problem of a pure inertial navigation system (INS) under the condition of satellite signal outages, this paper proposes a brain-like navigation method based on a navigation cell model of the hippocampus to improve the accuracy and intelligence of the INS. The proposed method employs vision to acquire external perception information as an absolute reference for INS position error correction, which is established by analyzing the navigation mechanism of the rat brain. The prominent advantages of the presented method include: (1) a remarkable effect in reducing the accumulated errors of INS can be obtained; and (2) a hardware implementation procedure of an INS/vision brain-like navigation system on a single-chip microcomputer is designed and established, which makes possible the engineering application of the brain-like navigation system by providing technical detail. Also, an outdoor vehicle test is carried out to verify the superiority of the proposed INS/vision brain-like navigation system in position measurement. Finally, the optimal performance shows the effectiveness of the proposed method in accumulated error correction and accuracy improvement for INS.