GPS height has been added as a measurement option along with range finder and baro
Selection of the height measurement source has been moved into a separate function
Each height source is assigned its own measurement noise
If GPS or baro alt is not able to be used, it reverts to baro
When baro is not being used, an offset is continually calculated which enables a switch to baro without a height step.
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.
Large magnetometer innovations on the ground could be caused by factors that will disappear when flying, eg:
a) Bad initial gyro bias
b) External magnetic field disturbances (adjacent metal structures, placement of hatches with magnets, etc)
To avoid unnecessary switches, we inhibit switching until off-ground and when sufficient time has lapsed from power on to learn gyro bias offsets.
If the magnetometer fails innovation consistency checks for too long (currently 10 sec), then the next available sensor approved for yaw measurement will be used.
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.
This was problematic to implement with magnetometer switching. It is likely that slow magnetometer learning can still be performed externally (eg plane) but this will need to be monitored to see if it causes issues.
The setting of the EKF origin and the entry into GPS aiding mode have been separated to make the logic clear.
The order of operations has been changed to ensure that when a reset to GPS is performed, a valid GPS measurement is available in the buffer
Declaration of GPS availability is not made unless the GPS data has been entered into the buffer
Only applied to interfaces required for data logging.
If an invalid instance is requested, the data for the primary instance is returned. This allows the primary data to be returned by calling with a -1 instance value.
Apply filtering to baro innovation check and and don't apply innovation checks once aiding has commenced because GPS and baro disturbances on the ground and during launch could generate a false positive
Prevents frame over-runs due to simultaneous fusion of measurements on each instance.
The offset is only applied if less than 5msec available between frames
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.
Paul Riseborough
Andrew Tridgell
Lucas De Marchi