AMO-HEAD: Adaptive MARG-Only Heading Estimation for UAVs under Magnetic Disturbances

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Guo, Qizhi, Yang, Siyuan, Lyu, Junning, Sun, Jianjun, Lin, Defu, He, Shaoming
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866908721064443904
author Guo, Qizhi
Yang, Siyuan
Lyu, Junning
Sun, Jianjun
Lin, Defu
He, Shaoming
author_facet Guo, Qizhi
Yang, Siyuan
Lyu, Junning
Sun, Jianjun
Lin, Defu
He, Shaoming
contents Accurate and robust heading estimation is crucial for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) when conducting indoor inspection tasks. However, the cluttered nature of indoor environments often introduces severe magnetic disturbances, which can significantly degrade heading accuracy. To address this challenge, this paper presents an Adaptive MARG-Only Heading (AMO-HEAD) estimation approach for UAVs operating in magnetically disturbed environments. AMO-HEAD is a lightweight and computationally efficient Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) framework that leverages inertial and magnetic sensors to achieve reliable heading estimation. In the proposed approach, gyroscope angular rate measurements are integrated to propagate the quaternion state, which is subsequently corrected using accelerometer and magnetometer data. The corrected quaternion is then used to compute the UAV's heading. An adaptive process noise covariance method is introduced to model and compensate for gyroscope measurement noise, bias drift, and discretization errors arising from the Euler method integration. To mitigate the effects of external magnetic disturbances, a scaling factor is applied based on real-time magnetic deviation detection. A theoretical observability analysis of the proposed AMO-HEAD is performed using the Lie derivative. Extensive experiments were conducted in real world indoor environments with customized UAV platforms. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in providing precise heading estimation under magnetically disturbed conditions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_10979
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AMO-HEAD: Adaptive MARG-Only Heading Estimation for UAVs under Magnetic Disturbances
Guo, Qizhi
Yang, Siyuan
Lyu, Junning
Sun, Jianjun
Lin, Defu
He, Shaoming
Robotics
Accurate and robust heading estimation is crucial for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) when conducting indoor inspection tasks. However, the cluttered nature of indoor environments often introduces severe magnetic disturbances, which can significantly degrade heading accuracy. To address this challenge, this paper presents an Adaptive MARG-Only Heading (AMO-HEAD) estimation approach for UAVs operating in magnetically disturbed environments. AMO-HEAD is a lightweight and computationally efficient Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) framework that leverages inertial and magnetic sensors to achieve reliable heading estimation. In the proposed approach, gyroscope angular rate measurements are integrated to propagate the quaternion state, which is subsequently corrected using accelerometer and magnetometer data. The corrected quaternion is then used to compute the UAV's heading. An adaptive process noise covariance method is introduced to model and compensate for gyroscope measurement noise, bias drift, and discretization errors arising from the Euler method integration. To mitigate the effects of external magnetic disturbances, a scaling factor is applied based on real-time magnetic deviation detection. A theoretical observability analysis of the proposed AMO-HEAD is performed using the Lie derivative. Extensive experiments were conducted in real world indoor environments with customized UAV platforms. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in providing precise heading estimation under magnetically disturbed conditions.
title AMO-HEAD: Adaptive MARG-Only Heading Estimation for UAVs under Magnetic Disturbances
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10979