Preliminary performance assessment of Radar-aided monocular Visual Odometry for small aerial platforms

Monocular Visual Odometry (VO) is widely used for small aerial platforms navigation. However, environment conditions can limit the use of cameras. Radar Odometry (RO) can be envisaged when illumination conditions hinder visual navigation. Indeed, radar can help estimation of platform speed and interframe platform displacement, thus solving also the inherent monocular VO scale estimation problem. Performance of radar-aided monocular VO navigation solution, to be used then within the framework of all-illumination multi-sensor navigation, is assessed with test in real operational scenario. Results show acceptable standalone performance, that can be further improved with more complex architectures.