Journal of Engineering and Technological Sciences
Vol. 46 No. 2 (2014)

Increased Error Observability of an Inertial Pedestrian Navigation System by Rotating IMU

Khairi Abdulrahim (Facultyof Science and Technology, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM))
Chris Hide (Nottingham Geospatial Institute, University of Nottingham)
Terry Moore (Nottingham Geospatial Institute, University of Nottingham)
Chris Hill (Nottingham Geospatial Institute, University of Nottingham)



Article Info

Publish Date
01 Jul 2014

Abstract

Indoor pedestrian navigation suffers from the unavailability of useful GNSS signals for navigation. Often a low-cost non-GNSS inertial sensor is used to navigate indoors. However, using only a low-cost inertial sensor for the system degrades its performance due to the low observability of errors affecting such low-cost sensors. Of particular concern is the heading drift error, caused primarily by the unobservability of z-axis gyro bias errors, which results in a huge positioning error when navigating for more than a few seconds. In this paper, the observability of this error is increased by proposing a method of rotating the inertial sensor on its y-axis. The results from a field trial for the proposed innovative method are presented. The method was performed by rotating the sensor mechanically"“mounted on a shoe"“on a single axis. The method was shown to increase the observability of z-axis gyro bias errors of a low-cost sensor. This is very significant because no other integrated measurements from other sensors are required to increase error observability. This should potentially be very useful for autonomous low-cost inertial pedestrian navigation systems that require a long period of navigation time.

Copyrights © 2014






Journal Info

Abbrev

JETS

Publisher

Subject

Engineering

Description

Journal of Engineering and Technological Sciences welcomes full research articles in the area of Engineering Sciences from the following subject areas: Aerospace Engineering, Biotechnology, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Engineering Physics, Environmental ...