UAV Positioning Based on Multi-Sensor Fusion

Real-time and stable positioning data is essential for the UAV to perform various tasks. The traditional multi-sensor data fusion algorithm needs to know the measurement noise of sensor data, and even if there are corresponding adaptive methods to estimate the noise, most methods cannot deal with time-varying noise. In addition, traditional fusion algorithms usually are complicated, causing a large amount of calculation. In this paper, a multi-sliding window classification adaptive unscented Kalman filter (MWCAUKF) method with timestamp sort updating was proposed, which can improve the accuracy and stability of positioning. This method consists of three phases. First, according to the timestamp of sensor data, the multi-sensor data are added with fusion filtering in order. Then it estimates the measurement noise of multiple sensors through multiple sliding Windows. Finally, the sensor data classification method is adopted to deal with the filter instability caused by time-varying noise. Both theoretical analysis and experimental results show that this method has a low computational cost, high accuracy, and good stability.