Implementation of an Attitude Detection and Localization Module for Micro-Aerial Vehicles Based on Arduino Platform

Over the past decade, micro-aerial vehicles have been developed rapidly and have found more and more applications among a wide range of mission-oriented civilian uses, such as search and rescue, reconnaissance, and delivery of light-weight objects. To achieve the above applications, the MAVs have to be equipped with an accurate attitude detection and localization module to maintain a stable attitude and a correct heading direction during flight. In this paper, we present the implementation of an attitude detection and localization module for unmanned aerial vehicles by integrating sensing data from the GPS sensor, inertial measurement unit, and digital compass. We utilize the Arduino platform to resolve the Euler angles of attitude from the gyro sensors of IMU, compute the heading direction of flight from the digital compass, and retrieve the altitude and longitude data of the vehicle from the GPS sensor and indicate its position in the Google map in real time. To avoid the data drift problem of the GPS sensor, we apply the zero velocity updated algorithm to detect the zero motion of the vehicle from the measurements of the IMU and determine whether to update the localization information.