Deploying Complementary filter to avert gimbal lock in drones using Quaternion angles

Presently, drones are extensively used in agriculture field and military surveillance applications. Cameras mounted to capture high resolution images on the drone is a unique drone design feature. A large amount of video data is to be processed. Therefore it is important to analyze the gimbal design unit which stabilizes the camera during drone navigation. This can be achieved through hardware unit design and the software processing module which stabilizes the drone camera for horizontal view always. This paper presents the implementation of complementary filter using quaternion angles to mitigate the gimbal lock occurrence. The analysis of gyroscope drift issue and the accelerometer jitter issue discussed, forms the strong base to obtain knowledge to design the complementary filter. This motivates the need for using the low pass filter at the output of the accelerometer angle computation unit, to remove the jitter. It also facilitates the use of high pass filter after the gyroscope data computing process to remove the low frequency noise generated by the drift phenomenon. The mathematical model for the complementary filter illustrated highlights the need for use of quaternion angles, instead of Euler angles to keep track of the drone's position during navigation. Sensor data is obtained for gyroscope and accelerometer interfaced to an ATmega processing unit.