Uncertainty Propagation and Bayesian Fusion on Unimodular Lie Groups from a Parametric Perspective

Abstract: We address the problem of uncertainty propagation and Bayesian fusion on unimodular Lie groups. Starting from a stochastic differential equation (SDE) defined on Lie groups via Mckean-Gangolli injection, we first convert it to a parametric SDE in exponential coordinates. The coefficient transform method for the conversion is stated for both Ito's and Stratonovich's interpretation of the SDE. Then we derive a mean and covariance fitting formula for probability distributions on Lie groups defined by a concentrated distribution on the exponential coordinate. It is used to derive the mean and covariance propagation equations for the SDE defined by injection, which coincides with the result derived from a Fokker-Planck equation in previous work. We also propose a simple modification to the update step of Kalman filters using the fitting formula, which improves the fusion accuracy with moderate computation time.