This paper describes recent advances with our earlier developed Personal Dead-reckoning (PDR) system for GPS-denied environments. The PDR system uses a foot-mounted Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) that also houses a three axismagnetometer. In earlier work we developed methods for correcting the drift errors in the accelerometers, thereby allowing very accurate measurements of distance traveled....

A new obstacle detection algorithm for unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) is presented. A state-of-the-art graphical model for semantic segmentation is extended to incorporate boat pitch and roll measurements from the on-board inertial measurement unit (IMU), and a stereo verification algorithm that consolidates tentative detections obtained from the segmentation is proposed. The IMU readings are...

The performance of MEMS inertial technology has evolved from automotive quality to that approaching tactical-grade quality (1 deg/h, 1 mg). This evolution is a direct result of advances made in the key technology areas driven by gun-launched projectile requirements. The application of silicon MEMS inertial technology to competent munitions efforts began in the early 1990s. Initially, gun hardne...

This research aims at enhancing the accuracy of land vehicular navigation systems by integrating GPS and Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System (MEMS) based inertial measurement units (IMU). This comprises improving the MEMS-based inertial output signals as well as investigating the limitations of a conventional Kalman Filtering (KF) solution for MEMS-IMU/GPS integration. These limitations are due to ...

The aim of this study was to validate a wearable inertial measurement unit (IMU), containing a 3D accelerometer and gyroscope, for the estimation of countermovement jump height. The absolute vertical acceleration of the IMU positioned on the back of the participant at L5 level, compensated for trunk rotations, was used to obtain jump height by applying the equation of free-fall to the motion of...

In navigation applications, the presence of an unknown bias in the measurement of rate gyros is a key performance-limiting factor. In order to estimate the gyro bias and improve the accuracy of attitude measurement, we proposed a new method which uses the rotation of an inertial measurement unit, which is independent from rigid body motion. By actively changing the orientation of the inertial m...

This paper introduces a method for the substantial reduction of heading errors in inertial navigation systems used under GPS-denied conditions. Presumably, the method is applicable for both vehicle-based and personal navigation systems, but experiments were performed only with a personal navigation system called “Personal Dead Reckoning” (PDR). In order to work under GPS-denied conditions, the ...

Paramagnetic beads have the superior advantages of easy separation and resuspension by controlling the magnetic filed. Previously, we have developed Magtration technology to automate paramagnetic bead handling and have built several automated instruments that handle 1-12 samples simultaneously. To achieve more high-throughput sample processing, two types of a 96-arrayed Integrated Magtration Un...

The application of low-cost L1 GPS receivers integrated with micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) inertial measurement units (IMU) allows the continuous observation of position, velocity and orientation which opens new possibilities for comparison of athletes’ performance throughout a racecourse. In this paper, we compare loosely and closely coupled integration strategies under realistic raci...

This report presents a novel orientation filter applicable to IMUs consisting of tri-axis gyroscopes and accelerometers, and MARG sensor arrays that also include tri-axis magnetometers. The MARG implementation incorporates magnetic distortion and gyroscope bias drift compensation. The filter uses a quaternion representation, allowing accelerometer and magnetometer data to be used in an analytic...