An Optical-Flow-Assisted Navigation Method for UAVs Using Sage-Husa EKF

Ke Hu, Xueyong Wu, Huaxing Xu, Juan Li*, Jie Li

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are usually equipped with low-cost global positioning systems (GPS)/inertial integrated navigation systems. In the GPS-denied environment, the low-cost inertial navigation system cannot meet the navigation requirements due to information divergence. This paper proposes an optical-flow-assisted navigation method for UAVs. Firstly, an improved sum of absolute difference (SAD) block matching algorithm is proposed to calculate the optical flow fields. Then, the calculated results are combined with range information to calculate the optical flow line-of-sight (LOS) angular velocity. Finally, the Sage-Husa EKF is used to fuse the inertial and optical flow information to suppress the divergence of inertial navigation information. Different matching criteria are used to calculate the optical flow field for the images collected by the vision sensors. The calculation results show that the improved SAD block matching algorithm can balance the accuracy and real-time performance of the calculation. The Sage-Husa EKF is used for the offline fusion of UAV sensor data. By comparing the results with those obtained by classical EKF method, this method proves to be able to suppress the filter divergence occurred in the information fusion process. The mean squared error (MSE) of the filtering results is improved.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAutomatic Control and Emerging Technologies - Proceedings of ACET 2023
EditorsHassan El Fadil, Weicun Zhang
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages14-28
Number of pages15
ISBN (Print)9789819701254
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024
EventInternational Symposium on Automatic Control and Emerging Technologies, ACET 2023 - Kenitra, Morocco
Duration: 11 Jul 202313 Jul 2023

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Electrical Engineering
Volume1141 LNEE
ISSN (Print)1876-1100
ISSN (Electronic)1876-1119

Conference

ConferenceInternational Symposium on Automatic Control and Emerging Technologies, ACET 2023
Country/TerritoryMorocco
CityKenitra
Period11/07/2313/07/23

Keywords

  • LOS angular velocity
  • Sage-Husa EKF
  • UAV navigation system
  • optical flow

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