Unscented Kalman filter for position estimation of UAV by using image information

Abstract

In this paper, the position estimation problem is solved by using unscented Kalman filter with observation uncertainty’s compensations. These observation uncertainties causing the estimation become inaccurate in position estimate problem. Visual observation is difficult for an unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with only a monocular-vision camera and often results in observation error because of the detected blurred images. A method to weight the observations is proposed in order to improve the position estimation. Simulation is performed using MATLAB and Simulink to verify the proposed method. The simulation result shows that the proposed method can estimate the position accurately.