Hi All,
I plan on building my own autonomous UAV from scratch. I'm using the following IMU: http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10183
Right now, I have two main issues.
1) My accelerometer picks up way too much vibration noise from the motors. The raw data is essentially useless unless I heavily filter the data. I do not want to filter the data so much as I'm doing a lot of floating point math and it kills the rise time constant of the accelerometer. There MUST be a better way to make my accelerometer noise immune. What are the best techniques for removing accelerometer vibration noise?
2) I want my UAV to have a very, very good idea of where it is. I'm talking absolute position. But if my gyroscope and accelerometer are reading noise from various sources, it will be difficult to calculate where exactly it is. What are the best techniques for making sensors "noise immune" and calculating absolute position without GPS dead reckoning?
Thank you for your time.
Replies
How? Would you mind posting the code??
If you haven't yet, carefully study the algorithms and approaches of other autopilot AHRSs which faced and dealt with the gyro/accel noise issue -- as well as many subsequent issues.
I suggest starting with MatrixPilot since it is well documented--the theory, etc., in PDF form. There are others. ArduPilot is an implementation of the same algorithm. CHR-6dm AHRS uses an Extended Kalman Filter. You might look at the MARG approach of Seb Madgwick (I've not looked at it and am unfamiliar with it but I gather it's another good approach).
Your statements lead me to believe you're where I was a year and a half ago. I've had the good fortune to learn quite a bit about MatrixPilot, Kalman filtering, Digital Signal Processing, and related AHRS topics in the process of developing an autonomous ground vehicle. Best of luck!