An Attitude Determination System For A Small Unmanned Helicopter Using Low-Cost Sensors

Abstract

Attitude determination system (ADS) that use inexpensive sensors and are based on computationally efficient and robust algorithms are indispensable for real-time vehicle navigation, guidance and control application. This paper describes an attitude determination system that is based on accelerometer and rate gyro. The algorithm is based on a extended Kalman filter. Using integration of angular rates as state vector and the earth's gravity as the measured vector, the attitude (roll and pitch) and gyro bias is estimated. At last, a discrete extended Kalman filter (EKF) implement of the same formulation is test on a small unmanned helicopter.