Practical considerations in precise calibration of a low-cost MEMS IMU for road-mapping applications

This paper addresses the theoretical and experimental development of a calibration scheme to overcome the intrinsic limitations of a low-cost Micro-Electrical-Mechanical System (MEMS) based Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). The two-stage calibration algorithm was developed and tested successfully on a six-degree of freedom prototype MEMS IMU to determine the deterministic and stochastic errors of the sensor. This paper makes use of artificial observations known as pseudo-velocity measurements resulting from a specific scheme of rotation to calibrate the IMU in the laboratory environment. The proposed structure is then modified and utilised as a basis for the IMU's error estimation in outdoor navigation applications. For this purpose, the designed calibration method is applied to an integrated GPS/MEMS IMU system, showing improved navigational and road sign positioning performance in a test vehicle.

[1]  M. S. Grewal,et al.  Application of Kalman filtering to the calibration and alignment of inertial navigation systems , 1991 .

[2]  Wouter Olthuis,et al.  Procedure for in-use calibration of triaxial accelerometers , 1997 .

[3]  José A. Castellanos,et al.  Robocentric map joining: Improving the consistency of EKF-SLAM , 2007, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[4]  Yang Gao,et al.  Error Analysis of Low-Cost MEMS-based Accelerometers for Land Vehicle Navigation , 2002 .

[5]  J. Lambert.  Numerical Methods for Ordinary Differential Equations , 1991 .

[6]  Saurabh Godha,et al.  Performance evaluation of low cost MEMS-based IMU integrated with GPS for land vehicle navigation application , 2006 .

[7]  Isaac Skog,et al.  Calibration of a MEMS inertial measurement unit , 2006 .

[8]  Hugh F. Durrant-Whyte,et al.  A high integrity IMU/GPS navigation loop for autonomous land vehicle applications , 1999, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[9]  C. Ballantine.  On the Hadamard product , 1968 .

[10]  Robert L. Williams,et al.  Case study: Inertial measurement unit calibration platform , 2000, J. Field Robotics.

[11]  Jonghyuk Kim,et al.  Autonomous Navigation for Airborne Applications , 2004 .

[12]  J. Farrell,et al.  The global positioning system and inertial navigation , 1999 .

[13]  Eric Foxlin,et al.  Miniaturization, calibration & accuracy evaluation of a hybrid self-tracker , 2003, The Second IEEE and ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, 2003. Proceedings..

[14]  Hugh F. Durrant-Whyte,et al.  Achieving integrity in an INS/GPS navigation loop for autonomous land vehicle applications , 1998, Proceedings. 1998 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.98CH36146).

[15]  Wei Gao,et al.  Gyroscope Drift Estimation in Tightly-coupled INS/GPS Navigation System , 2007, 2007 2nd IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications.

[16]  Priyanka AGGARWAL,et al.  Cost-effective Testing and Calibration of Low Cost MEMS Sensors for Integrated Positioning , Navigation and Mapping Systems , 2006 .

[17]  Naser El-Sheimy,et al.  A new multi-position calibration method for MEMS inertial navigation systems , 2007 .

[18]  Marco Parvis,et al.  Procedure for effortless in-field calibration of three-axial rate gyro and accelerometers , 1995 .

[19]  Eun-Hwan Shin,et al.  A New Calibration Method for Strapdown Inertial Navigation Systems , 2022 .

[20]  Jang Gyu Lee,et al.  Application of nonlinear smoothing to GPS/INS integrated navigation system , 2005 .

[21]  John Weston,et al.  Strapdown Inertial Navigation Technology , 1997 .

[22]  Hyung Keun Lee,et al.  Application of Nonlinear Smoothing to Integrated GPS/INS Navigation System , 2005 .

[23]  Carl D. Crane,et al.  Integrated INU/DGPS for autonomous vehicle navigation , 1996, Proceedings of Position, Location and Navigation Symposium - PLANS '96.

[24]  M. J. Hadfield,et al.  Ring laser gyros come down to Earth: field test results on the RLG modular azimuth position system (MAPS) , 1988, IEEE PLANS '88.,Position Location and Navigation Symposium, Record. 'Navigation into the 21st Century'..

[25]  Naser El-Sheimy,et al.  Thermal Calibration of Low Cost MEMS Sensors for Land Vehicle Navigation System , 2008, VTC Spring 2008 - IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference.

[26]  Mohammed El-Diasty,et al.  Calibration and Stochastic Modelling of Inertial Navigation Sensor Erros , 2008 .

[27]  Hugh F. Durrant-Whyte,et al.  Initial calibration and alignment of low-cost inertial navigation units for land vehicle applications , 1999, J. Field Robotics.

[28]  M.F. Golnaraghi,et al.  Initial calibration of an inertial measurement unit using an optical position tracking system , 2004, PLANS 2004. Position Location and Navigation Symposium (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37556).

[29]  Stefan Winkler,et al.  MEMS-Based IMU Development, Calibration and Testing for Autonomous MAV Navigation , 2003 .

[30]  Charles R. Johnson,et al.  Topics in matrix analysis: The Hadamard product , 1991 .

[31]  F. Golnaraghi,et al.  A Triaxial Accelerometer Calibration Method Using a Mathematical Model , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement.