IMU- and exteroceptive sensor-based fusion for UAV control

A quadrotor is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) popular for its low-cost and broad range of applications, like inspection, surveillance, cinematographic filmation, among others. Most of these applications are easily performed if the quadrotor is able to flight autonomously, which can be achieved using a feedback control loop. In order to be close the loop, the UAV state has to be estimated using the information of the on-board sensors. This work presents an IMU- and exteroceptive sensor- based fusion approach for state estimation to be used in a quadrotor control loop. The presented results are based on simulations using a dynamic model of the quadrotor, in which the performed estimation is used as feedback vector instead of the model true output. These results show that the proposed estimation approach is accurate enough to control the quadrotor and perform typical paths, like a circle and a square path.