Sky-bionic polar co-ordinate navigation is an effective means of providing navigational
information in the absence of a priori information.
Polar co-ordinate navigation during clear daytime conditions has been
studied, but there has been a lack of research of it at night due to
problems with noise. Therefore, in this paper, a short-wave infrared
polarimetric sensor system is designed, which is capable of acquiring
atmospheric polarimetric information in low illumination environments
at night, compared with traditional visible band sensors.
Additionally, based on the statistics of polarization angle
information, an algorithm for removing noise and starlight is proposed
to solve the influence of starlight and noise on the polarization
information at night. After many outdoor experiments, we found that
the method can output the heading angle stably and accurately, and its
standard deviation is controlled to be 0.42° in a clear
night.