ION Technical Content
Accelerometer Based IMUs
| Abstract: | MEMS accelerometers are smaller, lighter, consume less power, and are far more accurate than MEMS gyroscopes. Attempts to make gyro-free IMUs have not succeeded thus far because of the rapid propagation of fabrication errors into the inertial solutions. These fabrication errors are those that arise in the relative positioning and orientation of the accelerometers. We examine several solutions to this problem. Our focus is on multiple accelerometer configurations that permit calibrating out these errors in real-time. We first determine the optimal geometry of positioning the accelerometers (a minimum of six are needed) with a set of four 3-axis accelerometers to minimize the propagation of error. We consider minimization of both worst case error and average error. Our configurations are inspired by biological organisms that perform reasonable sensing with a large number of crude sensors. The difficulty of this approach is that the number of error variables increases with the number of sensors. Our approach to integrating different measurements is based more on algebraic methods than on standard Kalman filter methods. |
| Published in: |
Proceedings of the 2011 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 24 - 26, 2011 Catamaran Resort Hotel San Diego, CA |
| Pages: | 244 - 249 |
| Cite this article: | Gullipalli, P., Ariyur, K.B., "Accelerometer Based IMUs," Proceedings of the 2011 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, San Diego, CA, January 2011, pp. 244-249. |
| Full Paper: |
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Advancing positioning, navigation and timing (PNT)
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