Nonlinear Deterministic Observer for Inertial Navigation using Ultra-wideband and IMU Sensor Fusion

TL;DR

This paper introduces a nonlinear deterministic observer for inertial navigation that fuses UWB and IMU data, ensuring robust, exponential convergence in GPS-denied environments, and validates it with real drone flight data.

Contribution

It develops a novel continuous nonlinear observer on the extended Special Euclidean Group for sensor fusion, guaranteeing exponential convergence from nearly any initial condition.

Findings

Observer achieves exponential convergence of errors.

Validated with real-world drone flight data.

Effective in GPS-denied environments.

Abstract

Navigation in Global Positioning Systems (GPS)-denied environments requires robust estimators reliant on fusion of inertial sensors able to estimate rigid-body's orientation, position, and linear velocity. Ultra-wideband (UWB) and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) represent low-cost measurement technology that can be utilized for successful Inertial Navigation. This paper presents a nonlinear deterministic navigation observer in a continuous form that directly employs UWB and IMU measurements. The estimator is developed on the extended Special Euclidean Group $\mathbb{SE}_{2}\left(3\right)$ and ensures exponential convergence of the closed loop error signals starting from almost any initial condition. The discrete version of the proposed observer is tested using a publicly available real-world dataset of a drone flight. Keywords: Ultra-wideband, Inertial measurement unit, Sensor Fusion, Positioning system, GPS-denied navigation.