Attitude determination from single camera vector observations

Attitude determination is of major importance in Guidance and Control Systems of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV´s). Supplying wrong or not precise attitude very often turns to be catastrophic for the UAV´s. Vision sensors are must nowadays. They provide reach source of information given as relative measurements between the vehicle navigation parameters (position, velocity and attitude) and the environment. This paper presents a framework for attitude determination from single camera vector observations. We assume known environment in a form of a map and true vehicle positions from which each observation has been taken. Two different methods for attitude determination are presented: an iterative numerical solution based on Gauss Newton´s method and an exact method known as the Davenport q-method. Pros and cons of the both solutions are presented.