Position Estimation for Autonomous Hover of a Mini-Helicopter

Abstract

The state estimation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is crucial to control their orientation and navigation. The ability of an unmanned autonomous helicopter to hover enables one to operate in areas inaccessible or hazardous to other vehicles. In order to achieve stable hovering at a particular attitude and height, accurate estimations of orientation and position are essential. This paper presents the research activity taken up at IIT Kanpur on the position estimation of an autonomous mini-helicopter. A study was conducted on the calibration of the onboard Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and its data was used to estimate position. The next step is aimed at integrating Global Positioning System (GPS) with the IMU to obtain more accurate/reliable data by implementing Kalman filtering.