Visual Inertial Odometry

GPS-free
Outdoor nav
Fusion
Camera + IMU
< 10 m
90th percentile error
TRL 5-6
Relevant env validated

Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO) enables drones and autonomous systems to estimate position and orientation in 3D space by fusing camera imagery with IMU data.

Unlike GPS-only navigation, VIO works both indoors and outdoors. It is designed for GPS-denied or electronically contested missions where continuity of autonomous flight is critical.

Rodella VIO integration on aerial platform

VIO Program Specs

System Architecture

System
VIGNETTE (Vision-Guided Navigation Engine for Tactical Theatre Environments)
Input Sensors
Downward camera + IMU
Cold Start
< 3 sec heading resolution
Latency
150-400 ms per frame
Update Rate
5-10 Hz to EKF

Performance Metrics

Median Error
2.2 meters (PoC corridor)
90th Error
< 10 meters
Corridor Tested
~1.4 km
Added Weight
< 150 g target
Power
< 12 W target

Navigation Core

The VIO core continuously matches drone camera frames with geo-referenced satellite references, then fuses those fixes with inertial data for stable state estimation without GNSS.

VIO sensing and compute stack
VIO mission conditions in GNSS-denied environments

GNSS-Denied Operations

Designed for electronic warfare zones, dense urban canyons, where GNSS can be jammed, spoofed, or unavailable. VIO keeps autonomous flight functional in these denied environments.

Vision-Based Proxy System

Position estimates are sent to ArduPilot/PX4-compatible EKF pipelines as an external vision source through MAVLink, enabling drop-in deployment without custom flight controller firmware changes.

VIO integrated with mission-ready platform