Collective / Cooperative Navigation

Maintaining accurate navigation in GPS-denied conditions is critical for the U.S. military.Making inter-platform measurements and sharing data between multiple cooperating platforms has the potential to significantly enhance navigation accuracy, mitigating the loss of GPS.System & Technology Research and West Virginia University are developing a novel software framework for such cooperative navigation.Our formulation is based on a decentralized pose graph, allowing us to rigorously combine all measurements, while using measurement pedigree data to ensure we are not double-counting information.Our program plan includes trade studies to design a system that achieves high accuracy while operating with limited processing power and memory footprint.In addition, we will develop a method for optimizing flight trajectories to improve navigation performance, using a Monte Carlo simulation with a forward time, highly efficient trajectory generator that accurately represents the flight kinematics.