Now that we are using a consistent 50Hz minimum update rate for the covariance prediction we do not need a different initial gyro bias uncertainty for plane and copter to maintain filter stability margins.
The default value of 0.1 rad/s was too high and gave excessive settling time of the filter attitude after startup.
The initial attitude uncertainty has been increased to allow for some movement during startup.
If the baro data and magnetometer data are interleaved (arriving every 100 msec and offset by 50 msec), then the filter will go unstable during startup and fail to complete checks.
Fixes a potential error where changes to timing and arrival rate of magnetometer and baro data could block the fusion of synthetic position and velocity measurements, allowing unrestrained tilt errors during operation without GPS or optical flow.
Fusion of synthetic position or velocity measurements is now timed to coincide with fusion of barometer observations.
If a new barometer observation has not arrived after 200 msec then the synthetic position or velocity is fused anyway so that fusion of synthetic position or velocity observations cannot occur any slower than 5 Hz
Previous check default only checked the number of satellites and horizontal position accuracy.
Updated default value also checks HDoP and speed accuracy.
Now that we have a pre-arm check in place to detect bad lidar, the motion check is unnecessary and can false trigger for copters with flexible undercarriages or on uneven ground.
This method checks for consistency between accelerometer readings and switches to the unit with the lowest vibration of the difference exceeds 0.3g
The threshold of 1.7 m/s/s corresponds to a maximum tilt error of 10 deg assuming one IMU is good, one is bad and the EKF is using the bad IMU.
This commit changes the way libraries headers are included in source files:
- If the header is in the same directory the source belongs to, so the
notation '#include ""' is used with the path relative to the directory
containing the source.
- If the header is outside the directory containing the source, then we use
the notation '#include <>' with the path relative to libraries folder.
Some of the advantages of such approach:
- Only one search path for libraries headers.
- OSs like Windows may have a better lookup time.
If a badly conditioned covariance matrix causes negative innovation variances, then the filter will diverge. The previous approach of increasing process noise was not effective in some cases, so a hard reset of the covariance matrix has been adopted to guarantee recovery.
This fixes a numerical error observed using the replay on flight log which had significant periods of compass rejection.
This patch increases initial gyro bias uncertainty and plane and rover specific process noise to improve the rate of gyro bias learning.
This reduces the likelihood of a navigation failure due to rapid temperature changes in the inertial sensors causing rapid changes in zero rate offset.
The increase in process noise cannot be applied to Copter due to different numerical stability limits arising from the faster update rate.
This ensures that when we start using GPS, that the EKF will be using the correct declination for that location
If declination is not known it defaults to zero
This prevents bad inertial or GPS data combined with the post takeoff heading alignment check used by plane from resulting in earth field states that have an incorrect declination
This patch reworks the in-air transition criteria to reduce the likelihood of false positives and to ensure that there will be enough ground speed to make the heading check work reliably.
This check will declare the EKF as unhealthy if the horizontal position innovations exceed a threshold before motors are armed.
This will help to prevent a takeoff with bad inertial data caused by bad accel or gyro offsets.
Prolonged yaw rotations with gyro scale factor errors can cause yaw errors and gyro bias estimation errors to build up to a point where EKF health checks fail.
This patch introduces the following protections:
1) The assumed yaw gyro error is scaled using a filtered yaw rate and an assumed 3% scale factor error (MPU6000 data sheet)
2) When the filtered yaw rate magnitude is greater than 1 rad/sec, the Z gyro bias process noise is zeroed and the state variance set to zero to inhibit modification of the bias state
3) When the filtered yaw rate magnitude is greater than 1 rad/sec, the magnetometer quaternion corrections are scaled by a factor of four to maintain tighter alignment with the compass
Increases magnetometer weighting on yaw corrections when there there is no other aiding to constrain yaw drift.
Prevents switch to GPS if magnetometer data is failing innovation checks which indicates a bad yaw angle
The interface definition has been modified so that it returns true for a position obtained usin geither the normal inertial navigation calculation, or a raw GPS measurement.
This enables this function to be used to set a home position before flight.
If a calculated position is not available, the function will return a value based on raw GPS or last calculation if available, but the status will be set to false to indicate that it cannot be used for control.
The inconsistent baro data during ground effect takeoff combined with the larger variances in the Z accel bias state early in flight can cause unwanted changes in bias estimate and therefore changes in height estimation error.
This patch turns of the process noise and state updates for the Z accel bias state when takeoff in ground effect is expected.
Thsi fixes a potential bug where the vehicle could land at a lower location without disarming and re-enter ground effect takeoff mode wiht a baro height floor above the current altitude, causing unpredictable height gain
Ground effect baro errors can cause a spike in height innovation on disarming if ground effect compensation was used during the landing. This causes a transient AHRS fault message if this innovation is outside the pre-arm check limits.
Resetting the vertical position state to the measured height after disarming prevents this.
This estimate is used to offset baro data if we need to switch across from range finder data due to sensor failure. The previous filter coefficients gave a 0.5 seconds time constant on the offset which was too susceptible to baro noise.
Range finder and optical flow data can drop-out and be reliable very close to ground. these patches enable the takeoff to be more relaibly detected and constrain optical flow navigation drift in the first part of takeoff.
Falls back to baro if range finder is unavailable
Adds parameter enabling user to select which height source (baro or range finder) will be used during optical flow nav.
The magnetic field states are reset once at 1.5 metres and again at 5 metres. This height check was using the height at the first arm event as the reference. In the situation where there is baro drift and extgended time between the first arm event and flight, this can cause the magnetic field state to be reset when on the ground. If this happens when flying off a metallic surface, the resultant heading errors can cause sever toilet bowling.
Improve the quality of the GPS required to set an EKF origin
Eliminate repeated update of origin height - origin height updates once when EKF origin is set.
Operation in GPS mode is linked to setting of origin
The maximum time copters can reject GPS has been reduced from 10 to 7 seconds as flight logs have show that inertial dead reckoning with vibration and calibration errors is not good enough to support 10 seconds without aiding.
This patch causes the EKF to update the height of its origin each time it receives a valid GPs message whislt disarmed.
The resultant EKF origin height represents the height of the zero baro alt datum relative to the GPS height datum.
Flight tests have shown that the magnetic field distortion associated with flight from steel structures can extend 3m or higher. To counteract this, a second and final yaw and magnetic field alignment has been added which is activated when the height exceeds 5m for the first time.
Logic used to delay optical flow and airspeed fusion to prevent it occurring on the same time step as magnetometer fusion has been removed. This is no longer required to efficiency improvements made at the firmware level.
Improvements in PX4 firmware have reduced the computational load and mkae the previous practicwe of splitting magnetometer and optical flow fusion across multiple time steps unnecessary and make it possible to perform a covariance prediction prior to fusing data on the same time step. This patch:
1) Ensures that a covariance prediction is always performed prior to fusion of any observation
2) Removes the splitting of magnetometer fusion so that fusion of the X,Y and Z components occurs on the same time time step
3) Removes the splitting of optical flow fusion so that fusion of X and Y components occurs on the same time step
UBlox receivers report an estimate of the speed accuracy that tests show correlates well to speed glitches. Using this to scale the GPS velocity observation noise will reduce the effect of bad GPS velocity data.
If the vehicle moves significantly or the GPS changes position significantly pre-armed, then the GPS glitch logic was being invoked when the first GPs measurements were fused. This patch resets the position to the GPS when the vehicle arms.
Due to the way that gyro calibration is done, the EKF could be effectively not run for up to 30 seconds in extreme cases, making it possible that the GPS would be failed on arming and the copter put into a non-GPS mode.
the longer term solution is to update the gyro calibration so that it does not hold up other processing. the short tyermfix in thsi patch is to look for evidence of a 3D lock in the last received GPS message.
This fixes a bug that meant that once the EKF had started up in a non-GPS mode, it would no longer read the GPS and therefore would never be able to use GPS again until reset.
When Copter arms, the AHRS/EKF may not be run for a few hundred msec depending on conditions. This can cause the arming check to fail the optical flow sensor and place the EKF in a constant position mode.
This additional explicit setting of the constPosMode and constVelMode reduces the likelihood of logic errors being introduced in the future as it places the intended setting of these parameters at arming in the one place. the constVelmode and constPosMode only have one set of conditions each that can trigger these modes in flight, so if these modes are true after arming it will be clear that it was the in-flight condition that triggered.
This ensures the position and velocity measurement status will be set as timed out immediately after use of those measurements is inhibited. This will improve the timeliness of filter status reporting.
It does not make sense to relax the limits on vehicle speed and nav gains just because we have received some invalid flow data. This could make the situation worse if the invalid data was being caused by too much speed.
If we are relying on flow data the vehicle limits should always be applied.
When we are not using GPS measurements, we should not be allowing the GPS glitch logic to reset position states as this can interfere with operation of non GPS modes.
When PV aiding is disabled, then the timeout time reference should not be reset becasue we want the position measurement timeout status to remain true the whole time the measurement is not being used.
Paul Riseborough
Andrew Tridgell
Gustavo Jose de Sousa
Randy Mackay
Jonathan Challinger
Tom Pittenger
Staroselskii Georgii
Paul Riseborough
Arthur Benemann
myly10
Grant Morphett