GNSS-inertial state initialization by distance residuals

Abstract: Initializing the state of a sensorized platform can be challenging, as a limited set of initial measurements often carry limited information, leading to poor initial estimates that may converge to local minima during non-linear optimization. This paper proposes a novel GNSS-inertial initialization strategy that delays the use of global GNSS measurements until sufficient information is available to accurately estimate the transformation between the GNSS and inertial frames. Instead, the method initially relies on GNSS relative distance residuals. To determine the optimal moment for switching to global measurements, we introduce a criterion based on the evolution of the Hessian matrix singular values. Experiments on the EuRoC and GVINS datasets show that our approach consistently outperforms the naive strategy of using global GNSS data from the start, yielding more accurate and robust initializations.