INS/GPS Based State Estimation of Micro Air Vehicles Using Inertial Sensors

Abstract

The most attractive and attention seeking topic of aerospace world is Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) which broadly speaking it can be categorized as significantly smaller aircraft than conventional aircrafts. Micro Air Vehicles can be divided as autonomous, semi-autonomous and remote controlled flying machines which can be fixed wing MAV, Flapping wing MAV and rotary wing MAV. One of the crucial problems regarding Micro Air Vehicle is its stability which is basically concerned with the guidance, navigation and control. State Estimation is an important aspect of navigation and this paper deals with the state estimation problem of micro Air vehicle. Inertial sensors are being used including MEMS Gyro, MEMS Accelerometer, Magnetometer and GPS in Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and three Discrete Time Extended Kalman Filter Schemes have been used for the state estimation purpose. Trajectory and required data is recorded in Flight Simulator and MATLAB has been used for the simulations. A comprehensive parametric study is carried out and results are analyzed and briefly discussed.

Keywords: Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS), Micro Air Vehicle (MAV), Measurement Covariance Matrix, Process Covariance Matrix