Development of an attitude heading reference system for an airship

[摘要] A real time attitude and heading reference system (AHRS) was successfully implemented for use onan airship. The AHRS was tested on board a small airship (blimp) with real data supplied from theinertial measurement unit and GPS receiver.The inertial measurement unit was built with lower grade sensors, resulting in significant reductionsin component cost. To ensure accurate navigation results, the high rate inertial measurements werecomplemented with low rate GPS velocity and position updates in an extended Kalman filterconfiguration.A study was made of various Kalman filter configurations, especially the possibility of splitting abig Kalman filter into smaller Kalman filters. It was found that the best trade-off between accuracyand processing power was achieved by having two smaller Kalman filters running in sequence. Thefirst extended Kalman filter estimates the attitude of the airship, while the second extended Kalmanfilter estimates the velocity and position of the airship.The two smaller Kalman filters were implemented on an onboard computer to provide real timeestimates of the attitude, velocity and position of the airship.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University