Delta-Position Estimation-Based IMU Odometry: A Comparison of MLP and Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks
This work addresses the issue of cumulative error in learning-based inertial odometry caused by direct regression of absolute position. To mitigate this, the authors propose estimating incremental displacement (Δp) over a 50 ms sliding window and reconstructing the trajectory via numerical integration. The study introduces Kolmogorov–Arnold Networks (KANs) into IMU odometry for the first time, leveraging their learnable B-spline activation functions to effectively suppress long-term error accumulation. Experiments on the EuRoC MAV dataset demonstrate that, compared to conventional multilayer perceptrons (MLPs), KANs reduce cumulative drift error by 44% while using only approximately one-sixth the number of parameters, and exhibit superior stability under both P₅₀ and P₉₀ metrics.