Microelectromechanical System (MEMS) technology is advancing rapidly. Gyroscopes, accelerometers and magnetometers, also referred to as an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), has traditionally been associated with aerospace and industrial robotics but is now within every smart phone. The proliferation of these low-cost devices has facilitated countless new applications with many more still unrealised. This dissertation presents work towards this end. A significant contribution of this work was the development of novel Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS) algorithms that fuse together sensor data from an IMU to provide an absolute measurement of orientation relative to the Earth. The novel work presented on non-gyro IMU s demonstrated the potential practical benefits of such kinematically redundant sensor arrays. Low-cost MEMS can only be fully utilised if they are combined with a calibration solution to provide precise measurements with a determined accuracy. This dissertation presents a comprehensive calibration solution to the specific requirements of these sensors based on extensive characterisations investigations. The calibration solutions enable sensors costing <10 United States Dollar (USD) to achieve a static pitch/roll accuracy of <10 and a static heading accuracy of <2°. This performance is equivalent to commercial 1M Us costing up to 3000 USD. The AHRS algorithm and sensor calibration works were brought together in the development of three IMU hardware platforms. To date, >500 have been sold and the open-source associated algorithm downloaded> 10,000 times. Each platform addressed a specific design need and together these facilitated a wide range of new applications; demonstrated by the numerous scientific publications that resulted from collaborative projects and user projects.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:681552 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Madgwick, Sebastian O. H. |
| Contributors | Harrison, Andrew |
| Publisher | University of Bristol |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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