• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.440-446
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• 2020

A well-known difficulty in attitude estimation based on inertial measurement unit (IMU) signals is the occurrence of external acceleration under dynamic motion conditions, as the acceleration significantly degrades the estimation accuracy. Lee et al. (2012) designed a Kalman filter (KF) that could effectively deal with the acceleration issue. Ahmed and Tahir (2017) modified this method by adjusting the acceleration-related covariance matrix because they considered covariance modeling as a pivotal factor in the estimation accuracy. This study investigates the effects of covariance modeling on estimation accuracy in an IMU-based attitude estimation KF. The method proposed by Ahmed and Tahir can be divided into two: one uses the covariance including only diagonal components and the other uses the covariance including both diagonal and off-diagonal components. This paper compares these three methods with respect to the motion condition and the window size, which is required for the methods by Ahmed and Tahir. Experimental results showed that the method proposed by Lee et al. performed the best among the three methods under relatively slow motion conditions, whereas the modified method using the diagonal covariance with a high window size performed the best under relatively fast motion conditions.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.60 no.12
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• pp.2339-2345
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• 2011

This paper proposes a new multi-filtered inertial navigation system to estimate the attitude and position of moving objects. This system has two states, the one is attitude state and the other is position/velocity state. For compensating IMU sensor errors, each of the two states uses a different filter: the attitude state uses the EKF and the position state uses the UPF. The fast and precise characteristics of the EKF have been properly utilized for the attitude estimation, while superior dynamic characteristics of the UPF have been fully adopted for the position estimation. The combination of these two filters in an inertial navigation system improves the system performance to be faster and more accurate. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of this approach comparing to the conventional ones.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.147-161
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• 2008

In this paper, fine attitude estimation using low-cost sensors for attitude pointing missions of spacecraft is addressed. Attitude kinematics and gyro models including bias models are in general utilized to estimate spacecraft attitude and angular rate. However, a linearized model and a transition matrix are derived in this paper from nonlinear spacecraft dynamics with external disturbances. A Kalman filtering technique is applied and offers relatively high estimation accuracy under dynamic uncertainties. The proposed approach is demonstrated using numerical simulations.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2001.07d
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• pp.2317-2319
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• 2001

This paper presents a sensor fusion algorithm for the RC helicopter which uses a complementary filter. To measure the attitude angle of the helicopter, 3rate gyroscopes and a 3-axis accelerometer are mounted on the helicopter. The signals from them are passed though a complementary filter to produce estimation outputs. Experiments show that designed system is effective for the attitude estimation.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.24-36
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• 2011

A new approach for spacecraft absolute attitude estimation based on the unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is extended to relative attitude estimation and navigation. This approach for nonlinear systems has faster convergence than the approach based on the standard extended Kalman filter (EKF) even with inaccurate initial conditions in attitude estimation and navigation problems. The filter formulation employs measurements obtained from a vision sensor to provide multiple line(-) of(-) sight vectors from the spacecraft to another spacecraft. The line-of-sight measurements are coupled with gyro measurements and dynamic models in an UKF to determine relative attitude, position and gyro biases. A vector of generalized Rodrigues parameters is used to represent the local error-quaternion between two spacecraft. A multiplicative quaternion-error approach is derived from the local error-quaternion, which guarantees the maintenance of quaternion unit constraint in the filter. The scenario for bounded relative motion is selected to verify this extended application of the UKF. Simulation results show that the UKF is more robust than the EKF under realistic initial attitude and navigation error conditions.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.38 no.7
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• pp.693-701
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• 2010

In this paper, it is proposed that an attitude and position estimation algorithm based on a stereo camera system for a helmet tracker. Stereo camera system consists of two CCD camera, a helmet, infrared LEDs and a frame grabber. Fifteen infrared LEDs are feature points which are used to determine the attitude and position of the helmet. These features are arranged in triangle pattern with different distance on the helmet. Vision-based the attitude and position algorithm consists of feature segmentation, projective reconstruction, model indexing and attitude estimation. In this paper, the attitude estimation algorithm using UQ (Unit Quaternion) is proposed. The UQ guarantee that the rotation matrix is a unitary matrix. The performance of presented algorithm is verified by simulation and experiment.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.14 no.9
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• pp.865-872
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• 2008

Spacecraft attitude estimation using the nonlinear unscented filter is addressed to fully utilize capabilities of the unscented transformation. To release significant computational load, an efficient technique is proposed by reasonably removing correlation between random variables. This modification introduces considerable reduction of sigma points and computational burden in matrix square-root calculation for most nonlinear systems. Unscented filter technique makes use of a set of sample points to predict mean and covariance. The general QUEST(QUaternion ESTimator) algorithm preserves explicitly the quaternion normalization, whereas extended Kalman filter(EKF) implicitly obeys the constraint. For spacecraft attitude estimation based on quaternion, an approach to computing quaternion means from sampled quaternions with guarantee of the quaternion norm constraint is introduced applying a constrained optimization technique. Finally, the performance of the new approach is demonstrated using a star tracker and rate-gyro measurements.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.894-900
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• 2005

A new approach to the straightforward implementation of the unscented filter in a unit quaternion space is proposed for spacecraft attitude estimation. Since the unscented filter is formulated in a vector space and the unit quaternions do not belong to a vector space but lie on a nonlinear manifold, the weighted sum of quaternion samples does not produce a unit quaternion estimate. To overcome this difficulty, a method of weighted mean computation for quaternions is derived in rotational space, leading to a quaternion with unit norm. A quaternion multiplication is used for predicted covariance computation and quaternion update, which makes a quaternion in a filter lie in the unit quaternion space. Since the quaternion process noise increases the uncertainty in attitude orientation, modeling it either as the vector part of a quaternion or as a rotation vector is considered. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed approach successfully estimates spacecraft attitude for large initial errors and high tip-off rates, and modeling the quaternion process noise as a rotation vector is more optimal than handling it as the vector part of a quaternion.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.1675-1682
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• 2017

This paper deals with three dimensional orientation estimation algorithm for an attitude and heading reference system (AHRS) based on nine-axis inertial/magnetic sensor signals. In terms of the orientation estimation based on the use of a Kalman filter (KF), the quaternion is arguably the most popular orientation representation. However, one critical drawback in the quaternion representation is that undesirable magnetic disturbances affect not only yaw estimation but also roll and pitch estimations. In this paper, a sequential direction cosine matrix-based orientation KF for AHRS has been presented. The proposed algorithm uses two linear KFs, consisting of an attitude KF followed by a heading KF. In the latter, the direction of the local magnetic field vector is projected onto the heading axis of the inertial frame by considering the dip angle, which can be determined after the attitude KF. Owing to the sequential KF structure, the effects of even extreme magnetic disturbances are limited to the roll and pitch estimations, without any additional decoupling process. This overcomes an inherent issue in quaternion-based estimation algorithms. Validation test results show that the proposed method outperforms other comparison methods in terms of the yaw estimation accuracy during perturbations and in terms of the recovery speed.

• Current Research on Agriculture and Life Sciences
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.159-163
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• 2014

Agricultural unmanned helicopters have become a new paradigm for aerial application. Yet, such agricultural helicopters require easy and affordable attitude control systems. Therefore, this study presents an affordable attitude measurement system using a DCM (direction cosine matrix) algorithm that would be applied to agricultural unmanned helicopters. An IMU using a low-cost MEMS and an algorithm to estimate the attitude of the helicopter were applied in a gimbals structure to evaluate the accuracy of the attitude measurements. The estimation errors in the attitude were determined in comparison with the true angles determined by absolute position encoders. The DCM algorithm and sensors showed an accuracy of about 1.1% for the roll and pitch angle estimation. However, the accuracy of the yaw angle estimation at 3.7% was relatively larger. Such errors may be due to the magnetic field of the stepping motor and encoder system. Notwithstanding, since the intrinsic behavior of the agricultural helicopter remains steady, the determination of attitude would be reliable and practical.