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Micro Aerial Vehicle Navigation with Visual-Inertial Integration Aided by Structured Light

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2019

Yunshu Wang
Affiliation:
(Navigation Research Center, College of Automation Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 211106, China) (Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Internet of Things and Control Technologies (NUAA), Nanjing, 211106, China) (School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia)
Jianye Liu
Affiliation:
(Navigation Research Center, College of Automation Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 211106, China) (Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Internet of Things and Control Technologies (NUAA), Nanjing, 211106, China)
Jinling Wang
Affiliation:
(School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia)
Qinghua Zeng*
Affiliation:
(Navigation Research Center, College of Automation Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 211106, China) (Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Internet of Things and Control Technologies (NUAA), Nanjing, 211106, China)
Xuesong Shen
Affiliation:
(School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia)
Yueyuan Zhang
Affiliation:
(Navigation Research Center, College of Automation Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 211106, China)
*
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Abstract

Considering that traditional visual navigation cannot be utilised in low illumination and sparse feature environments, a novel visual-inertial integrated navigation method using a Structured Light Visual (SLV) sensor for Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) is proposed in this paper. First, the measurement model based on an SLV sensor is studied and built. Then, using the state model based on error equations of an Inertial Navigation System (INS), the measurement model based on the error of the relative motion measured by INS and SLV is built. Considering that the measurements in this paper are mainly related to the position and attitude information of the present moment, the state error accumulation in traditional visual-inertial navigation can be avoided. An Adaptive Sage-Husa Kalman Filter (ASHKF) based on multiple weighting factors is proposed and designed to make full use of the SLV measurements. The results of the simulation and the experiment based on real flight data indicate that high accuracy position and attitude estimations can be obtained with the help of the algorithm proposed in this paper.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Navigation 2019 
Figure 0

Figure 1. The model of cross-structured light sensor.

Figure 1

Figure 2. Illustration of attitude and position measurement (a) Relationship between each frame for posture measurement (b) Relationship between three structured light points.

Figure 2

Figure 3. The simulated MAV trajectory.

Figure 3

Figure 4. The simulation flow. (a) The total simulation flow. (b) The simulation flow of SLV sensor.

Figure 4

Figure 5. Mean error and RMSE of KF and ASHKF with different forgetting factors.

Figure 5

Figure 6. The navigation results of two cases. (a) The comparison of attitude for single navigation systems. (b) The comparison of position for single navigation systems.

Figure 6

Figure 7. The navigation results of three cases. (a) The comparison of attitude for three cases. (b) The comparison of position for three cases.

Figure 7

Figure 8. The environment of verification. (a) The quad rotor test bed designed independently. (b) The easy track motion capture system. (c) The screenshot of motion capture system software.

Figure 8

Figure 9. The trajectory of dynamic flight from top view.

Figure 9

Figure 10. Lines extraction and intersections detection. (a) The image captured by onboard camera. (b) The original lines extraction. (c) The lines enhancing and intersections detection.

Figure 10

Figure 11. Comparison of hover test between easy track and the proposed method. (a) Attitude comparison of hover test. (b) Position comparison of hover test. (c) Attitude error of hover test. (d) Position error of hover test.

Figure 11

Figure 12. Comparison of dynamic flight test between easy track and the proposed method. (a) Attitude comparison of dynamic flight test (b) Position comparison of dynamic flight test (c) Attitude error of dynamic flight test (d) Position error of dynamic flight test

Figure 12

Table 1. The Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) of the navigation data.