Positioning system

Abstract

A positioning system (200) comprising a hybridized inertial measurement unit (IMU). The hybridized IMU comprises an inertial measurement unit (IMU) (202), hereafter referred to as IMU, a star tracker (203) enabling the observation of celestial bodies day and night, and a computer for calculating a position by hybridizing the measurements from the IMU and the star tracker. The star tracker (203) comprises an optical lens associated with an active pixel image sensor, enabling imaging of a field of view with a half-field θs between 2° and 10°; and a high-pass spectral filter with a cutoff wavelength between 600 nm and 850 nm. The relative position of the star tracker (203) and the IMU (202) is fixed. The star tracker and the UMI are mounted on a steerable mount (201) adapted to point the star tracker (203) in various directions with a pointing accuracy between 0.1° and θs. (Figure 2)