EcoIMU: A dual triaxial-accelerometer inertial measurement unit for wearable applications

Abstract

This paper describes EcoIMU, a gyro-free, wearable inertial measurement unit (IMU) built with a pair of triaxial accelerometers that are spatially separated and wirelessly connected on the body. It can output the translation and rotation of the body for the purpose of motion tracking and dead reckoning applications. It mitigates error accumulation and drift problems using domain knowledge including pause identification and geometric constraints on the two nodes. Experimental results show EcoIMU to have less drift error while consuming significantly lower power than comparable IMUs built with MEMS gyroscopes and accelerometers. © 2010 IEEE.