A Contraction Theory-Based Analysis of the Stability of the Deterministic Extended Kalman Filter

The contraction properties of the extended Kalman filter, viewed as a deterministic observer for nonlinear systems, are analyzed. The approach relies on the study of an auxiliary “virtual” dynamical system. Some conditions under which exponential convergence of the state error can be guaranteed are...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bonnabel, Silvere, Slotine, Jean-Jacques E.
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 2015
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97723
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7161-7812
Description
Summary:The contraction properties of the extended Kalman filter, viewed as a deterministic observer for nonlinear systems, are analyzed. The approach relies on the study of an auxiliary “virtual” dynamical system. Some conditions under which exponential convergence of the state error can be guaranteed are derived. Moreover, contraction provides a simple formalism to study some robustness properties of the filter, especially with respect to measurement errors, as illustrated by a simplified inertial navigation example. This technical note sheds another light on the theoretical properties of this popular observer.