A system of guiding a mobile platform in an unmapped area and without producing a map of the unmapped area, the system including: a mobile platform; a sensory interface coupling to one or more sensors including at least some visual sensors and at least some inertial sensors, wherein the one or more sensors are configured to sense one or more of position, motion or environment of the mobile platform; a processor coupled to the sensory interface and the mobile platform to provide guidance and control, and further coupled to a computer readable storage medium storing computer instructions configured for performing: maintaining a set of time dependent tracking states that include: (i) a pose and (ii) one or more frames of sensor readings including at least some frames from the at least some visual sensors wherein at least some frames include sets of 2D feature points located using image information from the at least some visual sensors; wherein each frame of sensor readings can include sensory information received from any one of a plurality of sensors available to the mobile platform; selecting two or more tracking states from the set of time dependent tracking states; creating a 2D feature correspondences set comprising of common 2D feature points among the visual sensor frames from the selected tracking states; triangulating 2D feature points from the 2D feature correspondences set to form a 3D point set; selecting a subset of the 3D point set that includes 3D points having re-projection error within a threshold; updating current poses for at least two of the tracking states within the set of time dependent tracking states subject to a criterion including reduction of a total of re-projection errors of the selected 3D points; and guiding the mobile platform in an unmapped area using the updated current pose determined for that at least two tracking states. a mobile platform; a sensory interface coupling to one or more sensors including at least some visual sensors and at least some inertial sensors, wherein the one or more sensors are configured to sense one or more of position, motion or environment of the mobile platform; a processor coupled to the sensory interface and the mobile platform to provide guidance and control, and further coupled to a computer readable storage medium storing computer instructions configured for performing: maintaining a set of time dependent tracking states that include: (i) a pose and (ii) one or more frames of sensor readings including at least some frames from the at least some visual sensors wherein at least some frames include sets of 2D feature points located using image information from the at least some visual sensors; wherein each frame of sensor readings can include sensory information received from any one of a plurality of sensors available to the mobile platform; selecting two or more tracking states from the set of time dependent tracking states; creating a 2D feature correspondences set comprising of common 2D feature points among the visual sensor frames from the selected tracking states; triangulating 2D feature points from the 2D feature correspondences set to form a 3D point set; selecting a subset of the 3D point set that includes 3D points having re-projection error within a threshold; updating current poses for at least two of the tracking states within the set of time dependent tracking states subject to a criterion including reduction of a total of re-projection errors of the selected 3D points; and guiding the mobile platform in an unmapped area using the updated current pose determined for that at least two tracking states. maintaining a set of time dependent tracking states that include: (i) a pose and (ii) one or more frames of sensor readings including at least some frames from the at least some visual sensors wherein at least some frames include sets of 2D feature points located using image information from the at least some visual sensors; wherein each frame of sensor readings can include sensory information received from any one of a plurality of sensors available to the mobile platform; selecting two or more tracking states from the set of time dependent tracking states; creating a 2D feature correspondences set comprising of common 2D feature points among the visual sensor frames from the selected tracking states; triangulating 2D feature points from the 2D feature correspondences set to form a 3D point set; selecting a subset of the 3D point set that includes 3D points having re-projection error within a threshold; updating current poses for at least two of the tracking states within the set of time dependent tracking states subject to a criterion including reduction of a total of re-projection errors of the selected 3D points; and guiding the mobile platform in an unmapped area using the updated current pose determined for that at least two tracking states.