Low-Cost IMU Sensors for Satellite Maturity Improvement

Abstract

The satellite technology proves its impact in the modern era with its wide benefits and applications. However, the cost of the development in this field presents gaps in many countries, almost the developed countries. Therefore, this paper provides a rich platform around low-cost sensors in order to improve maturity in space technology, mostly the system of attitude determination and control. The development of this knowledge turns out to be very interesting in order to achieve a space mission which leads to the progression of the spatial technology readiness level (TRL) defined by the international measurement scale which is able to estimate the technological maturity. Thus, the idea is carried out for the development of low-cost sensors’ system for attitude determination around an Arduino board. A sensor fusion method was applied on three types of sensors: accelerometer, magnetometer, and gyroscope in order to detect the reliable orientation. It is aimed to apply quaternion based Kalman filter on different platform than previous systems. It is succeeded therefore to improve measurement accuracy around low-cost sensor to achieve the main goal of this paper.