Vehicle State Estimation Combining Physics-Informed Neural Network and Unscented Kalman Filtering on Manifolds

Sensors (Basel). 2023 Jul 25;23(15):6665. doi: 10.3390/s23156665.

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel vehicle state estimation (VSE) method that combines a physics-informed neural network (PINN) and an unscented Kalman filter on manifolds (UKF-M). This VSE aimed to achieve inertial measurement unit (IMU) calibration and provide comprehensive information on the vehicle's dynamic state. The proposed method leverages a PINN to eliminate IMU drift by constraining the loss function with ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Then, the UKF-M is used to estimate the 3D attitude, velocity, and position of the vehicle more accurately using a six-degrees-of-freedom vehicle model. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed PINN method can learn from multiple sensors and reduce the impact of sensor biases by constraining the ODEs without affecting the sensor characteristics. Compared to the UKF-M algorithm alone, our VSE can better estimate vehicle states. The proposed method has the potential to automatically reduce the impact of sensor drift during vehicle operation, making it more suitable for real-world applications.

Keywords: IMU calibration; multi-sensor fusion; physics-informed neural network; unscented Kalman filtering on manifolds; vehicle state estimation.

Grants and funding

This work was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFB2503302), National Natural Science Foundation of China (52225212, U20A20333, U20A20331, 52072160, 52272418, U22A20100), Key Project for the Development of Strategic Emerging Industries of Jiangsu Province (BE2020083-3, BE2020083-2).