Abstract
A development procedure for a low-cost attitude and heading reference system (AHRS) with a self-developed three-axis rotating platform has been proposed. The AHRS consists of one 3-axis accelerometer, three single-axis gyroscopes, and one 3-axis digital compass. Both the accelerometer and gyroscope triads are based on micro electro-mechanical system (MEMS) technology, and the digital compass is based on anisotropic-magnetoresistive (AMR) technology. The calibrations for each sensor triad are readily accomplished by using the scalar calibration and the least squares methods. The platform is suitable for the calibration and validation of the low-cost AHRS and it is affordable for most laboratories. With the calibrated parameters and data fusion algorithm for the orientation estimation, the self-developed AHRS demonstrates the capabilities of compensating for the sensor errors and outputting the estimated orientation in real-time. The validation results show that the estimated orientations of the developed AHRS are within the acceptable region. This verifies the practicability of the proposed development procedure.
Highlights
The orientation of a vehicle in three-dimensional space is one of the most significant pieces of information required for the navigation, guidance and control of that vehicle
Since the Earth’s gravity and magnetic fields are both homogenous in specific locations, the calibration of the accelerometer and magnetometer could be executed by the scalar calibration, which is accomplished by rotating the platform to various random orientations
The platform is suitable for the development of low-cost AHRS and it is affordable for most laboratories
Summary
The orientation of a vehicle in three-dimensional space is one of the most significant pieces of information required for the navigation, guidance and control of that vehicle. These tests are undertaken by rotating the unit to a series of accurately known angles and positioning it in different orientations with respect to the local gravity vector Another similar method is applied on a mechanical platform to perform 18 precise and specific orientations, while the angular rate between orientations is maintained constant and known [4]. An algorithm called scalar calibration has been used to calibrate low-cost accelerometers and magnetometers in various random orientations in homogeneous gravity and magnetic fields [5] By using this method, the nine parameters—three scale factors, three biases and three nonorthogonal angles—for each sensor triad can be determined. The first one adopts a turntable to generate desired angular rate [9,10,11], while the other one performs the orientation estimation from angular rate integration via mathematical reasoning [7,8]
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