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REVIEW article

Front. Phys.
Sec. Space Physics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphy.2025.1487136
This article is part of the Research Topic Frontiers in Multi-Source Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) View all 6 articles

Overview of Development and Challenges of Attitude Determination for Rotary Wing UAVs Based on GNSS

Provisionally accepted
Yejia Zeng Yejia Zeng Zukun Lu Zukun Lu *Yuchen Xie Yuchen Xie Binbin Ren Binbin Ren Yi Yu Yi Yu Shaojie Ni Shaojie Ni
  • National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Attitude determination of rotary-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (RUAVs) is crucial for grasping their motion state and is a necessary condition to ensure the correct execution of flight missions. With the continuous development and the constant enhancement of measurement accuracy related to the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), attitude determination based on GNSS have become the mainstream high-precision attitude measurement approach. This paper mainly discusses the relevant theories of using GNSS for RUAV's attitude determination, introduces the key aspects that determine attitude accuracy in the attitude resolution process, such as integer ambiguity fixing, attitude solution algorithms, and integrated attitude measurement. It especially elaborates on the challenges that faced to be solved for current RUAVs to use the GNSS system for real-time and guarded attitude measurement.

    Keywords: satellite navigation1, Attitude Determination2, Integer Ambiguity3, Kalman Filtering4, Navigation Interference5

    Received: 27 Aug 2024; Accepted: 16 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Zeng, Lu, Xie, Ren, Yu and Ni. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Zukun Lu, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.