Photogrammetric visual odometry with unmanned ground vehicle using low cost sensors

Nowadays, there are several strong motivation to replace some dangerous human activities with the use of small unmanned system, both terrestrial and aerial. An interesting example is the use of ground unmanned rover in emergency, to realize an early mapping or to distribute the help. In this context, the Authors have investigated and developed an innovative method for terrestrial rover navigation considering low-cost sensors. The algorithms, implemented in Matlab, start to the acquisition up to the processing phase. The results have shown an impressive performance in terms of positioning accuracies: the maximum difference between the developed solution with respect to the reference coordinates is 60 cm, with a mean value of 38 cm. These results will have a great impact especially for autonomous navigation solutions.