Comparison of MEMS-Based and FOG-Based IMUs to Determine Sensor Pose on an Unmanned Aircraft System
Publication: Journal of Surveying Engineering
Volume 143, Issue 4
Abstract
Small-sized unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are restricted to use only lightweight microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based inertial measurement units (IMUs) due to their limited payload capacity. Still, some UAS-based geospatial remote sensing applications, such as airborne spectroscopy or laser scanning, require high accuracy pose (position and orientation) determination of the onboard sensor payload. This study presents ground-based experiments investigating the pose accuracy of two MEMS-based IMUs: the single-antenna MTi-G-700 (Xsens, Enschede, Netherlands) and the dual-antenna/dual-frequency Spatial Dual IMU (Advanced Navigation, Sydney, Australia)/global navigation satellite system (GNSS). A tightly coupled and postprocessed pose solution from a fiberoptic gyroscope (FOG)-based NovAtel synchronized position attitude navigation (SPAN) IMU (NovAtel, Calgary, Canada) served as a reference to evaluate the performance of the two IMUs under investigation. Results revealed a better position solution for the Spatial Dual, and the MTi-G-700 achieved a better roll/pitch accuracy. Most importantly, the heading solution from the dual-antenna configuration of the Spatial Dual was found to be more stable than the heading obtained with the reference SPAN IMU.
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Acknowledgments
This study was funded by the Australian Research Council within Discovery Grant DP140101488: AirLIFT. The authors acknowledge the technical support of Darren Turner, the postprocessing support of Jack Beardsley, and the field support of Steve Harwin and Iain Clarke.
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Published In
Journal of Surveying Engineering
Volume 143 • Issue 4 • November 2017
Copyright
© 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 18, 2016
Accepted: Jan 12, 2017
Published online: May 2, 2017
Discussion open until: Oct 2, 2017
Published in print: Nov 1, 2017
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