Global Uncertainty-Aware Planning for Magnetic Anomaly-Based Navigation

Abstract: Navigating and localizing in partially observable, stochastic environments with magnetic anomalies presents significant challenges, especially when balancing the accuracy of state estimation and the stability of localization. Traditional approaches often struggle to maintain performance due to limited localization updates and dynamic conditions. This paper introduces a multi-objective global path planner for magnetic anomaly navigation (MagNav), which leverages entropy maps to assess spatial frequency variations in magnetic fields and identify high-information areas. The system generates paths toward these regions by employing a potential field planner, enhancing active localization. Hardware experiments demonstrate that the proposed method significantly improves localization stability and accuracy compared to existing active localization techniques. The results underscore the effectiveness of this method in reducing localization uncertainty and highlight its adaptability to various gradient-based navigation maps, including topographical and underwater depth-based environments.