Bootstrap Stereo Error Simulations

Over the past three years, Lockheed has been working in navigation of an autonomous aerial vehicle using passively sensed images. One technique which has shown promise is bootstrap stereo, in which the vehicle's position is determined from the perceived locations of known ground control points. Successive pairs of known vehicle camera positions are then used to locate corresponding image points on the ground, creating new control points. This paper describes a series of error simulations which have been performed to investigate the error propagation as the number of boot-strapping iterations increases.