Attitude estimation adaptively compensating external acceleration

Abstract

This paper is concerned with attitude estimation using low cost, small-sized accelerometers and gyroscopes. A two step extended Kalman filter is proposed, which adaptively compensates external acceleration. External acceleration is the main source of estimation error. In the proposed filter, direction of external acceleration is estimated. According to the estimated direction, the accelerometer measurement covariance matrix of the two step extended Kalman filter is adjusted. The proposed algorithm is verified through experiments. Copyright © 2006 by The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers.