Aerodynamic model/INS/GPS failure-tolerant navigation method for multirotor UAVs based on federated Kalman Filter

At present, the integrated navigation system used by multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is heavily dependent on the GPS when flying outdoors. However, signal block, interference and other factors will lead to the GPS failure, in which case the UAVs' navigation error will quickly diverge. In this paper, an aerodynamic model / INS (Inertial Navigation System) / GPS failure-tolerant navigation method for multirotor UAVs based on FKF (Federated Kalman Filter) is proposed. The FKF is constructed based on aerodynamic model, INS and GPS. The aerodynamic model can be used to estimate the velocity of multirotor UAVs. And the fault of FKF is detected by the chi-square test. During the GPS outages, the sub-filter including the GPS is isolated. And when the aerodynamic model has faults, the sub-filter including the aerodynamic model is isolated. The experimental results show that the proposed failure-tolerant navigation method can effectively improve the navigation accuracy and reliability of the multirotor UAV while there is a fault.