# Switching State Estimators

This page shows you which state estimators are available and how you can switch between them.

TIP

EKF2 is highly recommended on vehicles with a GNSS/GPS. The Q-Estimator is recommended if you don't have GPS, and is commonly used in multicopter racers.

# Available Estimators

The available estimators are:

  • EKF2 attitude, position and wind states estimator (recommended) - An extended Kalman filter estimating attitude, 3D position / velocity and wind states.

  • LPE position estimator (deprecated) - An extended Kalman filter for 3D position and velocity states.

    WARNING

    LPE is deprecated. It works (at time of writing, in PX4 v1.14) but is no longer supported or maintained.

  • Q attitude estimator - A very simple, quaternion based complementary filter for attitude. It does not require a GPS, magnetometer, or barometer.

# How to Enable Different Estimators

For multirotors and VTOL use the parameter SYS_MC_EST_GROUP to choose between the following configurations (LPE is not supported for Fixed-wing).

SYS_MC_EST_GROUP Q Estimator LPE EKF2
1 enabled enabled
2 enabled
3 enabled

Note

For FMU-v2 (only) you will also need to build PX4 to specifically include required estimator (e.g. EKF2: make px4_fmu-v2, LPE: make px4_fmu-v2_lpe). This is required because FMU-v2 is too resource constrained to include both estimators. Other Pixhawk FMU versions include both.