Integration of a Triaxial Magnetometer into a Helicopter UAV GPS-Aided INS

Author

Barczyk, Martin ; Lynch, Alan F.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

Volume

48

Issue

4

fYear

2012

fDate

10/1/2012 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

2947

Lastpage

2960

Abstract

The University of Alberta´s Applied Nonlinear Controls Lab (ANCL) helicopter unmanned aerial vehicle´s (UAV´s) existing GPS-aided inertial navigation system (INS) does not provide observability of heading angle during hover. This motivates the integration of a triaxial magnetometer aiding sensor into the extended Kalman filter (EKF)-based navigation algorithm. A novel magnetometer calibration procedure is implemented and compared with conventional approaches. Experimental results in ground and flight testing confirm that the observability issue is resolved and demonstrate improvements in attitude estimation.

Keywords

Global Positioning System; Kalman filters; aerospace instrumentation; autonomous aerial vehicles; calibration; helicopters; inertial navigation; magnetometers; applied nonlinear controls lab; attitude estimation; extended Kalman filter based navigation algorithm; flight testing; heading angle; helicopter UAV GPS-aided inertial navigation system; magnetometer calibration; observability issue; triaxial magnetometer; unmanned aerial vehicle; Calibration; Global Positioning System; Helicopters; Magnetic field measurement; Magnetometers; Vehicles;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Aerospace and Electronic Systems, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9251

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TAES.2012.6324671

Filename

6324671