Optical flow/INS multi-sensor information fusion

Several optical flow sensors were mounted dispersedly on a missile airframe. The airframe kinematics model in the vertical plane and the optical flow sensor measurement model were established. Discrete-time Kalman filters were used to fuse the optical flow data and rate gyroscope data, and estimate the altitude, attitude and velocity of the airframe. A very-low altitude-holding flight simulation was then implemented based on these estimations. The simulation results indicate that several optical flow sensors and a rate gyroscope can be used to estimate the altitude, vertical velocity, pitching angle, pitching angular velocity and attack angle exactly and real-time. These estimations can help to implement very-low penetration missions.