Continuous Time Rate Gyro Calibration and Monocular Camera Misalignment Estimation using a Nonlinear Observer

The motivation for this paper is the development of an efficient, real-time method of aligning a monocular camera frame and inertial measurement unit (IMU) on the same rigid body, with the additional benefit of gyro scale factor and bias estimation. This paper presents the adaptation and analysis of a continuous-time observer originally designed for spacecraft to inertial/visual fusion applications. While the orientation reference utilized in this paper is acquired from a camera it is not limited to this and any absolute orientation reference can be used instead for calibration. The goal of this research is to present a convenient solution for reducing the burden of sensor alignment, calibration, and periodic calibration verification.