Improving robustness of the MAV yaw angle estimation for low-cost INS/GPS integration aided with tri-axial magnetometer calibrated by rotating the ellipsoid model

Abstract

This study designs a method to improve the robustness of the micro air vehicle (MAV) yaw angle estimation for lowcost inertial navigation system/global positioning system (INS/GPS) integration by using a tri-axial magnetometer. Observability properties of the integration navigation system are first analysed, indicating that all attitude angles have great observability with the aid of the heading measurement by a magnetometer, while the observability of yaw angle is low in traditional INS/GPS. To improve the robustness of yaw angle estimation, the authors calibrate the tri-axial magnetometer according to the rotating ellipsoid model and establish a fault detection and isolation mechanism to adjust the weight of magnetic-measurement adaptively and dynamically in integration navigation. The simulation and experiment results show that the proposed method can calibrate the tri-axial magnetometer properly and screen out the abnormal magnetic measurement for the robustness of yaw angle estimation, suggesting that this technique is a viable candidate for MAV navigation and control applications in complex magnetic fields.