scholarly journals 3-D Unitary ESPRIT: Accurate attitude estimation for unmanned aerial vehicles with a hexagon-shaped ESPAR array

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 701-711 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kefei Liu ◽  
João Paulo C.L. da Costa ◽  
Hing Cheung So ◽  
Florian Römer ◽  
Martin Haardt ◽  
...  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Carrio ◽  
Hriday Bavle ◽  
Pascual Campoy

The lack of redundant attitude sensors represents a considerable yet common vulnerability in many low-cost unmanned aerial vehicles. In addition to the use of attitude sensors, exploiting the horizon as a visual reference for attitude control is part of human pilots’ training. For this reason, and given the desirable properties of image sensors, quite a lot of research has been conducted proposing the use of vision sensors for horizon detection in order to obtain redundant attitude estimation onboard unmanned aerial vehicles. However, atmospheric and illumination conditions may hinder the operability of visible light image sensors, or even make their use impractical, such as during the night. Thermal infrared image sensors have a much wider range of operation conditions and their price has greatly decreased during the last years, becoming an alternative to visible spectrum sensors in certain operation scenarios. In this paper, two attitude estimation methods are proposed. The first method consists of a novel approach to estimate the line that best fits the horizon in a thermal image. The resulting line is then used to estimate the pitch and roll angles using an infinite horizon line model. The second method uses deep learning to predict attitude angles using raw pixel intensities from a thermal image. For this, a novel Convolutional Neural Network architecture has been trained using measurements from an inertial navigation system. Both methods presented are proven to be valid for redundant attitude estimation, providing RMS errors below 1.7° and running at up to 48 Hz, depending on the chosen method, the input image resolution and the available computational capabilities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 155014772110098
Author(s):  
Xiaoqin Liu ◽  
Xiang Li ◽  
Qi Shi ◽  
Chuanpei Xu ◽  
Yanmei Tang

Three-dimensional attitude estimation for unmanned aerial vehicles is usually based on the combination of magnetometer, accelerometer, and gyroscope (MARG). But MARG sensor can be easily affected by various disturbances, for example, vibration, external magnetic interference, and gyro drift. Optical flow sensor has the ability to extract motion information from image sequence, and thus, it is potential to augment three-dimensional attitude estimation for unmanned aerial vehicles. But the major problem is that the optical flow can be caused by both translational and rotational movements, which are difficult to be distinguished from each other. To solve the above problems, this article uses a gated recurrent unit neural network to implement data fusion for MARG and optical flow sensors, so as to enhance the accuracy of three-dimensional attitude estimation for unmanned aerial vehicles. The proposed algorithm can effectively make use of the attitude information contained in the optical flow measurements and can also achieve multi-sensor fusion for attitude estimation without explicit mathematical model. Compared with the commonly used extended Kalman filter algorithm for attitude estimation, the proposed algorithm shows higher accuracy in the flight test of quad-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles.


Author(s):  
A.A. Moykin ◽  
◽  
A.S. Medzhibovsky ◽  
S.A. Kriushin ◽  
M.V. Seleznev ◽  
...  

Nowadays, the creation of remotely-piloted aerial vehicles for various purposes is regarded as one of the most relevant and promising trends of aircraft development. FAU "25 State Research Institute of Chemmotology of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation" have studied the operation features of aircraft piston engines and developed technical requirements for motor oil for piston four-stroke UAV engines, as well as a new engine oil M-5z/20 AERO in cooperation with NPP KVALITET, LLC. Based on the complex of qualification tests, the stated operational properties of the experimental-industrial batch of M-5z/20 AERO oil are generally confirmed.


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