Cost-Efficient State Estimation for Precision Projectiles
Lois Fairfax, Frank E. Fresconi, Mark Costello · 49th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting including the New Horizons Forum and Aerospace Exposition · 2011
Guided projectiles are being developed by the Army to precisely eliminate targets and decrease collateral damage. In order to guide to target, precision projectiles must know their position and velocity, i.e. estimate their state. These states are often provided by the Global Positioning System (GPS). However, GPS can be jammed or suffer obstruction in urban or mountainous terrain. Alternate estimation techniques have been developed using an inertial navigation system (INS), but the accuracy requirements of the inertial measurement unit (IMU) in a traditional INS can cause the precision projectile to be orders of magnitude more expensive than unguided projectiles. The novel approach described in this work reduces state estimation cost and enables the projectile to guide to target in a GPSdenied environment. This is achieved by using an extended Kalman filter (EKF) to combine an inexpensive IMU with a computationally efficient point mass (PM) dynamic model. This Army-developed effort will provide cost-effective state estimation to allow precision projectiles to guide to target in a GPS-denied environment. Nomenclature