[Richard100]

Originally Posted by Ether

You don't need an accumulator when using a gyro if all you care about is your heading.

Not finding this to be very clear either. We're likely discussing different aspects of the problem.

Originally Posted by Ether

It's not clear what you're saying here.

Ok. The OP's framing of the problem:

Originally Posted by lethc

Currently both getAngle() and getYaw() are not continuous, and their ranges are [0, 360] and [-180, 180] respectively, so at the point where the robot crosses the threshold of a range the values jump ~360 degrees ...

Does anyone have any ideas on how I would get a continuous angle heading ...?

Proposed solution:

Originally Posted by Ether

what you want is the shortest angle from the previous reading to the present reading, with the correct sign. The IEEERemainder function¹ does this with one line of code:

shortest_angle = IEEERemainder(present-previous,360);

C# and Java both support IEEERemainder.


If your language does not support IEEERemainder, you can use this one-line function instead:

shortest_angle = (present-previous) - 360*floor(0.5+(present-previous)/360);

Proposed solution amendment:

Originally Posted by Richard100

Note that if one is streaming readings from an angular position sensor (such as a gyro or IMU), one would need to add an accumulator to this shortest_angle function to continually maintain angular position.

If the OP streamed a series of sensor readings, range constrained as [0,360], into a function

shortest_angle = (present-previous) - 360*floor(0.5+(present-previous)/360)

the resulting output would need to be accumulated to maintain position. Say robot yaw initializes at 0 degrees, moves clockwise over time to 15 degrees, then counter-clockwise to 350 degrees, as reported by the range constrained sensor. Consider:

Iteration       Previous        Present         Pres-Prev       Function       Accum
1		0		0	        0               0              0
2	        0               5	        5               5	       5
3	        5	        10	        5	        5	       10
4	        10	        15	        5	        5	       15
5	        15	        10	       -5	       -5	       10
6	        10	        350	        340	       -20	      -10

Rather than using what the OP started with, a Present value exhibiting the range-constrained discontinuity, it sounds like the OP needs the accumulated function result.

I'm interpreting the OPs desire for a function that converts his range-constrained sensor output to a non-range-constrained one. Your IEEERemainder function, with an accumulator, accomplishes this.