Application of extended kalman filter to unmanned helicopter navigation

The attitude control of unmanned helicopter needs accurate acceleration, velocity and attitude information. The error induced by using low cost and low precision inertial component which widely used in the strapdown inertial navigation system cannot be neglected. In order to reduce the effect of the error, the navigation equation of unmanned helicopter is established by using quaternion method and the filtering problem of the GPS/INS navigation system is investigated based on the extended Kalman filter theory. The last numerical simulation demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed design, and the design satisfies the engineering accuracy.