Tightly coupled navigation and wind estimation for mini UAVs

Martin Brossard (1) , Jean-Philippe Condomines (2) , Silvère Bonnabel (3)

1 CAOR - Centre de Robotique
2 ENAC - Ecole Nationale de l'Aviation Civile
3 Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris)

A novel nonlinear filter for the state-space model based on aided Inertial Navigation System, 1D Pitot static tube, angle-of-attack and angle-of-sideslip sensors is proposed. The solution, based on Multiplicative Kalman filtering, estimates in real-time the orientation, the velocity and the position of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle along with sensor bias and 3D wind components. This paper describes and justifies the designed tightly coupled estimation scheme with both theoretical and experimental considerations. We validate then the whole approach for a mini UAV controlled through the well-known Paparazzi autopilot system which we equip with a set of low-cost sensors (accelerometers, gyros, GPS, magnetometer, barometer, 1D Pitot static tube and angular sensors), by successfully comparing the estimates obtained from real flight data with the 3D wind ground truth provided from a 60-m weather measurement tower.

Domaines: Automatique / Robotique

Martin Brossard, Jean-Philippe Condomines, Silvère Bonnabel. Tightly coupled navigation and wind estimation for mini UAVs. AIAA GNC 2018, AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference, Jan 2018, Kissimee, United States. ⟨10.2514/6.2018-1843⟩. ⟨hal-01814261⟩