Accurate surveys of both position and azimuth are critical components of the artillery mission. These requirements must be met in all operational environments, including situations where GPS signals are degraded or denied. Currently, these requirements have been met using the Improved Position and Azimuth Determining System (IPADS). Unfortunately, the IPADS is based on older navigation sensor technology which results in a heavy and power-hungry system and limits the total mission effectiveness of the system. To address this need, we propose to develop a Compact Optimal Multi-Sensor Position and Attitude Survey System (COMPASS). COMPASS is an innovative approach that seamlessly combines state-of-the-art sensors, an optimal robust nonlinear fusion engine, and a modular system architecture which enables us to meet or exceed IPADS performance while greatly improving the system SWAP (under 10 lbs total sensor weight). This order-of-magnitude improvement in SWAP not only enables single-Marine operation, it opens up a new set of use cases, including the possibility for dismounted operations. COMPASS offers Marines a system that is lightweight, intelligent, and mission effective.
Benefit: The COMPASS technology offers a number of benefits including: outstanding positioning and aziumth accuracy in all environments, intelligent automation, and a very lightweight package. The technology supports commercial applications in the areas of precision surveying, autonomous car navigation in GPS-degraded environments, and autonomous UAV navigation and control.
Keywords: Robust Estimation, Robust Estimation, celestial navigation, Inertial navigation, GPS-degraded navigation, sensor fusion, precision survey, Optimal Estimation
