Inertial navigation systems

[generalbrando]

I'm wondering - for those who have used these sensors (mainly the accelerometers), did you shield the system (as in shielded cables)? I'm not really saying this as a suggestion - my team is planning out a design for position tracking and I was wondering if that would help fix the noise problem.

Thanks

[KevinB]

Originally Posted by generalbrando

I'm wondering - for those who have used these sensors (mainly the accelerometers), did you shield the system (as in shielded cables)? I'm not really saying this as a suggestion - my team is planning out a design for position tracking and I was wondering if that would help fix the noise problem.

Thanks

I toyed with the idea of an accelerometer-based system around the beginning of the year. I bought some, hooked them up to the EDUcontroller, and played with them for a while. I tried everything I could think of to reduce the noise, but it was still far too great to be worth anything for positioning. Some things I tried: different capacitors between the +5v and GND, different wire lengths, different types of filters on the output.

The reason for that (as I now finally have proven to myself) is because the acceleration would have to be integrated twice to achieve position information. The noise from the accelerometer would cause your velocity calculation to drift -- as the noise built up, your system would think you're going faster and faster (in one direction or the other). This is enough to totally throw off the position calculation.

[blindguyinanorg]

this noise we are talking about, what couses it. to me it seems that if the yaw sensor is reset every so often that would eliminate the errors.