GPS outages are a central issue for accurate navigation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in outdoor environments: The navigation solution of an inertial navigation system (INS) solely relying on measurements from a low-cost MEMS IMU quickly deteriorates and becomes unusable without aiding measurements. Therefore, new approaches are necessary for providing an accurate navigation solution at all times. In this paper, a model-aided navigation system for a quadrotor helicopter is extended by estimating the wind velocity. The main objective is to increase robustness and allow robust operation during all environmental conditions. Moreover, the benefit of this approach is that it does not require additional sensors, such as a camera or a differential GPS module and, therefore, does not increase hardware cost. Simulation results and outdoor test flights show that an accurate wind velocity estimation is obtained in challenging conditions. Even during GPS outages an accurate wind velocity estimation is still possible given that a higher-grade MEMS IMU is used. Moreover, it is shown that position estimation accuracy during GPS outages is significantly improved by including the wind velocity in the model-aided navigation system.
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