Non-Linear Complementary SO(3) Filters for Attitude Estimation and Navigation of Ground Vehicles

The use of Inertial Navigational System (INS) has been proven to be suitable for vehicular stability and control. The same system can be used for inertial based navigation in the absence of GPS. In this paper, the problem of obtaining good attitude estimates from low cost sensors used for car navigation in the absence of GPS data is discussed. The states to be estimated are using angular velocity and linear accleration signals obtained from the sets of gyros and accelerometers of the INS. The special orthogonal group, the SO(3)-based complementary filters, have been used as the estimators as they are most suited for embedded systems to generate highly efficient algorithms for navigation. The INS has also been integrated with a set of magnetometers to assist in achieving global navigation. This integration requires kinematics equations as well as the inclusion of the gyro and accelerometer calibration and filtering. By using the quatronion representation, not only highly compact algorithms for integration can be generated, but it can also estimate and remove the effects of other biases and misalignments caused by, for instance, inaccurate installations and inherent sensors problems. The results obtained through simulation indicate better performance then Kalman filter approach as well as iterative recursive least square approach even with low grade sensors. The results are comparable with attitude estimation using roll index but with much less computations and better performance.