Estimation of Air Velocity by Fusing Plant Model and Measurement of Inertial Measurement Unit

Abstract

A set of algorithms are developed to estimate the air velocity of the quadrotors by fusing the plant model of the three-dimensional aerodynamic force and the IMU (inertial measurement unit) measurement. The main ideas are to compute out the air velocity of the quadrotors at first with the measured load acceleration and the model of the aerodynamic force, and then to smooth the computed results with the extended Kalman filtering against the model uncertainties. The developed algorithms are verified in the closed-loop flight control system. The simulation results demonstrate that the air velocity of the quadrotors are estimated well in the large airspeed and the resulting closed-loop system with the estimated air velocity can achieve almost the same flight performances as that with the real air velocity.