A Bioinspired Navigation System for Multirotor UAV by Integrating Polarization Compass/Magnetometer/INS/GNSS

Stable and accurate heading angle estimation is challenging for low-cost small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) navigation, especially in the presence of geomagnetic anomaly. In this article, a bioinspired integrated navigation system (BINS) is designed such that the environmental adaptability of the navigation system can be enhanced. A bioinspired integrated navigation algorithm is presented to fuse the information of polarized skylight, geomagnetic field, inertia, and global navigation satellite system. The relationship among ambient light intensity, degree of polarization, and accuracy of polarization compass is revealed. Thus, the integrated polarization compass can be adapted to more complex weather conditions. A tightly coupled integrated navigation model is developed for BINS to fuse the information of polarization compass and magnetometer. Within the developed scheme, the polarization compass can not only correct the heading error of the system, but also help the magnetometer reconstruct the actual local geomagnetic field distribution. The problem of inaccurate geomagnetic field model in the magnetic anomaly environment is addressed. Moreover, the Chi-Square test is used to detect polarization compass outliers such that the navigation modes can be switched promptly. Finally, the ground static experiments and UAV flight tests are carried out. In comparison to traditional polarization navigation and geomagnetic navigation, the proposed system effectively improves the heading accuracy.