Position estimation and control for quadrotor using optical flow and GPS sensors

This study presented a position estimation and control method for quadrotor using optical flow and GPS sensors. Firstly, an optical flow based location algorithm is shown that calculates relative position from continues images. Considering the drift problem of optical flow, an improved Kalman filter based position estimation method is presented to enhance performance of location system. Then a PD based controller is developed for quadrotor which equips with a robust compensation to improve system stability. The accuracy of this position estimation system is verified by physical experiments. At last, a quadrotor experiment with position estimation and control method in this paper is carried out, which shows that our method enjoys high performance and is practical.