Attitude heading reference system with rotation-aiding visual landmarks

In this paper we present a novel vision-aided attitude heading reference system for micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) and other mobile platforms, which does not rely on known landmark locations or full 3D map estimation as is common in the literature. Inertial sensors which are commonly found on MAVs suffer from additive biases and noise, and yaw error will grow without bounds. The bearing-only measurements, which we call vistas, aid the vehicle's heading estimate and allow for long-term operation while correcting for sensor drift. Our method is experimentally validated on a commercially available low-cost quadrotor MAV.