Distributed altitude and attitude estimation from multiple distance measurements

This paper describes a generalized method for computing the altitude and attitude of a rigid body with respect to an inertial frame using a set of distance measurements obtained from a sensor network. In the case where all sensors are centrally measurable, a linear-optimal estimate is obtained. This method is used as a way for estimating altitude and attitude of the Distributed Flight Array, a modular multi-propeller flying vehicle where each module in the array obtains its own distance measurement and coordinates with its immediate neighbour(s) actions for flight. To account for communication bandwidth constraints, a scalable, distributed scheme is presented where each module shares local information. In the limit of sharing information, each module asymptotically computes the linear-optimal altitude and attitude estimate.