State estimation with PX4 / EKF

Attitude and navigation state estimation on the PX4 stack: sensor fusion of IMU, magnetometer, GNSS and barometer into a trusted flight state for control.

The focus was getting the estimator to actually converge and stay trustworthy on the target hardware, within a real-time budget, rather than only in simulation.

Key results

• Fully aided EKF: IMU tilt, magnetometer/yaw, GPS and barometer fusion
• State estimator running at ~219 Hz on the target
• Worst-case execution time cut from 37 ms to 1.5 ms with build optimisation
• Magnetometer fusion enabling yaw alignment from a static start

Tech

PX4 · EKF · Sensor fusion