REDUNDANT IMUS FOR PRECISE TRAJECTORY DETERMINATION

A redundant inertial measurement unit (IMU) is an inertial sensing device composed by more than three accelerometers and three gyroscopes. This paper analyses the performance of redundant IMUs and their potential benefits and applications in airborne remote sensing and photogrammetry. The theory of redundant IMUs is presented through two different algorithmic approaches. The first approach is to combine the inertial observations, in the observation space, to generate a “synthetic” non-redundant IMU. The second approach modifies the INS mechanization equations so that they directly account for the observational redundancy. The paper ends with an empirical assesment of the concept. For this purpose, redundant IMU data was generated by combining two IMUs in a non-orthogonal configuration and flying them. Preliminary results of this flight are presented.