Use an Euler yaw heading that switches between a 321 and 312 rotation
sequence to avoid areas of singularity. Using Euler yaw decouples the
observation from the roll and pitch states and prevents magnetic
disturbances from affecting roll and pitch via the magnetometer fusion
process.
The use of yaw angle fusion during startup and ground operation causes problems with tail-sitter vehicle types.
Instead of observing an Euler yaw angle, we now observe the yaw angle obtained by projecting the measured magnetic field onto the the horizontal plain.
This avoids the singularities associated with the observation of Euler yaw angle.
The innovation calculation should have been updated when the heading fusion maths was updated.
We now use a direct heading or yaw angle measurement in the derivation, not the difference between observed and published declination.
Change to user adjustable fusion of constant position (as per legacy EKF) instead of constant velocity.
Enable user to specify use of 3-axis magnetometer fusion when operating without aiding.
Don't allow gyro scale factor learning without external aiding data as it can be unreliable
Eliminate the use of horizontal position states during non-aiding operation to make it easier to tune.
Explicitly set the horizontal position associated Kalman gains to zero and the coresponding covariance entries to zero after avery fusion operation.
Make the horizontal velocity observation noise used during non-aiding operation adjustable.
Use a fixed value of velocity noise during initial alignment so that the flight peformance can be tuned without affecting the initial alignment.
The problem with using min() and max() is that they conflict with some
C++ headers. Name the macros in uppercase instead. We may go case by
case later converting them to be typesafe.
Changes generated with:
git ls-files '*.cpp' '*.h' -z | xargs -0 sed -i 's/\([^_[:alnum:]]\)max(/\1MAX(/g'
git ls-files '*.cpp' '*.h' -z | xargs -0 sed -i 's/\([^_[:alnum:]]\)min(/\1MIN(/g'
The copter method was being used for plane and the plane method was not being run due to the change in flight status not being detected.
The plane reset method did not trigger if the EKF had already dragged the velocity states along with the GPS or could align to an incorrect heading.
The method has been reworked so that it resets to the GPS course, but only if there are inconsistent angles and large innovations.
To stop a failed magnetometer causing a loss of yaw reference later in flight, if all available sensors have been tried in flight and timed out, then no further magnetoemter data will be used
Down-sample the IMU and output observer state data to 100Hz for storage in the buffer.
This reduces storage requirements for Copter by 75% or 6KB
It does not affect memory required by plane which already uses short buffers due to its 50Hz execution rate.
This means that the EKF filter operations operate at a maximum rate of 100Hz.
The output observer continues to operate at 400Hz and coning and sculling corrections are applied during the down-sampling so there is no loss of accuracy.
The original design intent was to require all axes to pass because severe errors are rarely constrained to a single axis.
This was not achieved with the previous implementation.
These changes move the innovation consistency checks for all three axes to the top before any axes are fused.
Unnecessary performance timers have been removed.
Vibration in the 400Hz delta angles could cause the angular rate condition check for in-flight magnetic field alignment to fail.
The symptons were failure to start magnetic field learning as expected when EK2_MAG_CAL=3 was set.
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.
The previous gain from rate to magnetometer error was excessive. The revised value is equivalent to a magnetic field length of 0.5 with a timing uncertainty of 0.01 sec
Extended GPS loss can result in the earth field states becoming rotated and making it difficult for the EKF to recover its heading when GPS is regained.
During prolonged GPS outages, the position covariance can become large enough to cause the reset function to continually activate. This is fixed by ensuring that position covariances are always reset when the position is reset.
The innovation variance was being used incorrectly instead of the state variance to trigger the glitch reset.
Because we have changed the yaw angle and have taken a point sample on the magnetic field, covariances associated with the magnetic field states will be invalid and subsequent innovations could cause an unwanted disturbance in roll and pitch.
The reset of the Euler angles to a new yaw orientation was being done using roll and pitch from the output observer states, not the EKF state vector which meant that when roll and pitch were changing, the reset to a new yaw angle would also cause a roll and pitch disturbance.
Don't fuse other measurements on the same frame that magnetometer measurements arrive if running at a high frame rate as there will be insufficient time to complete other operations.
Adds fusion of the declination when there are no earth relative measurements so that the declination angle and therefore the copters yaw angle have an absolute reference.
This enables the length (but not the declination) of the earth field North/East states to change along with the magnetometer offsets.
Paul Riseborough
dgrat
Lucas De Marchi
Siddharth Bharat Purohit
Paul Riseborough
Andrew Tridgell