Sliding mode based attitude estimation for accelerated aerial vehicles using GPS/IMU measurements

This paper addresses the problem of estimation of attitude of accelerated rigid body vehicles moving in 3D-space using IMU and data related to measurement of velocity by GPS. We propose a new observer for attitude estimation based on proportional-integral (PI) compensator along with discontinuous switching function in the estimation of velocity to compensate the effect of linear acceleration. The convergence analysis of the proposed observer is studied using Barbalat's lemma based on a Lyapunov like positive definite function to guarantee asymptotic convergence. The performance of the observer is illustrated by simulation results which show the convergence behaviour of the proposed observer.