Filter Banks and Integrity Monitoring for Visual UAV Navigation
Franz Andert, Simon Batzdorfer, Martin Becker, Peter A Hecker · elib (German Aerospace Center) · 2013
This paper outlines current and future navigation for small unmanned aircraft. An example scenario is the exploration of disaster areas where the aircraft flies at low altitudes and where a-priori hints like maps are outdated or otherwise not reliable. The paper tackles navigation problems where satellite data might be temporarily unavailable. It presents a state estimator which uses satellite, inertial, and visual data. In order to determine and correct errors, a filter bank is proposed to analyze the output of INS/GNSS integration and to exclude GNSS failures from further processing. The paper also presents results from flight tests with a small helicopter where a suitable trajectory can be calculated within incomplete navigation satellite constellations. Finally, the paper discusses some open issues for future work.