As a basis for autonomous operation, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) require an on-board state estimation that achieves both high accuracy as well as robustness with respect to certain conditions. We present a multi-sensor fusion framework based on Extended Kalman Filtering (EKF) which is light-weight enough to run on-board small unmanned airplanes using measurements from a MEMS based Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), static and dynamic pressure sensors, as well as GPS (position and velocity) and a 3D magnetic compass. The on-board state estimator continuously estimates position, velocity, attitude and heading, IMU biases as well as the 3D wind vector in a tightly-coupled manner. In addition, airplane Angle of Attack (AoA) as well as sideslip angle can be derived by involving an aerodynamics model. The resulting infrastructure allows for unbiased orientation, airspeed and AoA tracking even in the case of GPS outages over extended periods of time. It can furthermore detect and reject outliers in sensor readings using Mahalanobis distance checks. We validate the proposed method with flight data from a small unmanned airplane: we demonstrate robustness w.r.t. outliers and GPS outages by disabling or corrupting respective flight data in post processing analyses.


    Access

    Check access

    Check availability in my library

    Order at Subito €


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Robust state estimation for small unmanned airplanes


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2014-10-01


    Size :

    1644416 byte




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



    A 3D Imaging Radar for Small Unmanned Airplanes - ARTINO

    Weiss, M. / Ender, J. H. G. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2005


    Microwave-powered, unmanned, high-altitude airplanes

    Morris, C. E. K., Jr. | NTRS | 1984



    Certification of Electronic Displays for Part 23 Airplanes (Small Airplanes)

    Dvorak, E. / IEEE / AIAA | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2003


    Small company uses airplanes

    Drake, G.F. | Engineering Index Backfile | 1960