Experimentation of Monocular Visual-Aided Inertial Navigation on Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle †

This paper presents an experimental study utilizing the vision-aided inertial navigation system (VaINS) on a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). VaINS operates as a data-logging box, collecting sensor data, processing them, and transmitting the navigation solution to an operator terminal in real time. The flight data contain buildings, vegetation, a river, a lake, and mountains. The camera’s pitch angle was tested at both a grazing angle of 22° and a nadir angle of 90°. The aim of this experiment was twofold: to explore the application of VaINS on a fixed-wing UAV and to assess the performance of the image-aided navigation system. The image-aided inertial navigation system (INS) solution was compared with a reference solution during GNSS-denied time intervals. The camera’s pitch angle at 90° exhibited a slight advantage over the grazing angle at 22°. Moreover, in the linear flight segments, the image-aided navigation system demonstrated significantly better performance compared to the free inertial solution during the GNSS-denied periods.