Large magnetometer innovations on the ground could be caused by factors that will disappear when flying, eg:
a) Bad initial gyro bias
b) External magnetic field disturbances (adjacent metal structures, placement of hatches with magnets, etc)
To avoid unnecessary switches, we inhibit switching until off-ground and when sufficient time has lapsed from power on to learn gyro bias offsets.
If the magnetometer fails innovation consistency checks for too long (currently 10 sec), then the next available sensor approved for yaw measurement will be used.
This was problematic to implement with magnetometer switching. It is likely that slow magnetometer learning can still be performed externally (eg plane) but this will need to be monitored to see if it causes issues.
The setting of the EKF origin and the entry into GPS aiding mode have been separated to make the logic clear.
The order of operations has been changed to ensure that when a reset to GPS is performed, a valid GPS measurement is available in the buffer
Declaration of GPS availability is not made unless the GPS data has been entered into the buffer
Prevents frame over-runs due to simultaneous fusion of measurements on each instance.
The offset is only applied if less than 5msec available between frames
Use the more robust, but less accurate compass heading fusion up to 5m altitude
Wait for the magnetometer data fusion time offset to be correct before using data to reset states
Don't reset magnetic field states if the vehicle is rotating rapidly as timing offsets will produce large errors
When doing the yaw angle reset, apply the reset increment to all quaternions stored in the output buffer to avoid transients produced by yaw rotations and the 0.25 second fusion time horizon offset.
Only do the one yaw and mag reset at 5m, not two at 1.5 and 5.0m
Always re-do the yaw and mag reset when leaving the ground.
This sets the fusion of the synthetic position and velocity to occur at the same time as the barometer
This makes filter tuning more consistent between GPS and non-GPS useage
High measurement data rates can fill buffers with data that is always new and never fused because it is over-written before it falls behind the measurement time horizon.
The legacy EKF switches GPs aiding on on arming, whereas the new EKF switches it on based on GPS data quality.
This means the decision to arm and therefore the predicted solution flags must now reflect the actual status of the navigation solution as it will no longer change when motor arming occurs.
If high vibration levels cause offsets between the two, it switches to the accelerometer with lower vibration levels. The default behaviour is to use the average of both accelerometers.
Paul Riseborough
Andrew Tridgell