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Evaluating SLAM algorithms for Autonomous Helicopters

Navigation with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) requires good knowledge of the current position and other states. A UAV navigation system often uses GPS and inertial sensors in a state estimation solution. If the GPS signal is lost or corrupted state estimation must still be possible and this is where simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) provides a solution. SLAM considers the problem of incrementally building a consistent map of a previously unknown environment and simultaneously localize itself within this map, thus a solution does not require position from the GPS receiver. This thesis presents a visual feature based SLAM solution using a low resolution video camera, a low-cost inertial measurement unit (IMU) and a barometric pressure sensor. State estimation in made with a extended information filter (EIF) where sparseness in the information matrix is enforced with an approximation. An implementation is evaluated on real flight data and compared to a EKF-SLAM solution. Results show that both solutions provide similar estimates but the EIF is over-confident. The sparse structure is exploited, possibly not fully, making the solution nearly linear in time and storage requirements are linear in the number of features which enables evaluation for a longer period of time.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:liu-12282
Date January 2008
CreatorsSkoglund, Martin
PublisherLinköpings universitet, Institutionen för systemteknik, Institutionen för systemteknik
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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