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Visual-inertial-actuator odometry for multirotor UAVs with rotor drag and external disturbance

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Abstract

Accurate knowledge of an unmanned aerial vehicle’s (UAV) state and external forces is crucial for motion control. One method to obtain this information is Visual-Inertial-Actuator Odometry (VIAO) which combines commonly available vision and inertial sensors with actuation data which consists of a model of the vehicle dynamics and input measurements. In this paper, we propose VIAO system based on the existing VIMO (Visual Inertial Model-Based Odometry) method. Our approach includes a dynamical model for a multirotor UAV with rotor drag. In addition, a disturbance observer is added for constant force estimation. The observer is integrated to the optimization-based method by adding a residual term to the cost functional. The proposed system can differentiate between the constant or slowly time-varying component of the external force and accelerometer bias. We evaluate the performance using a benchmark dataset and show an average of \(21\%\) improvement in position estimation accuracy.

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Funding

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Award Number: RGPIN-2023-04156, Recipient: Alan Lynch.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, 9211 116 Street NW, Edmonton, AB, T6G 1H9, Canada

    Amir Moeini, Alan F. Lynch & Qing Zhao

Authors
  1. Amir Moeini
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  2. Alan F. Lynch
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  3. Qing Zhao
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All authors contributed equally.

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Correspondence to Alan F. Lynch.

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Moeini, A., Lynch, A.F. & Zhao, Q. Visual-inertial-actuator odometry for multirotor UAVs with rotor drag and external disturbance. Int. J. Dynam. Control (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40435-023-01357-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40435-023-01357-5

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