ANALYSIS OF MICRO-ELECTROMECHANICAL INERTIAL MEASUREMENT UNITS FOR UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE APPLICATIONS

Abstract

Typically, an inertial navigation system (INS) is used to determine the position, speed, and orientation of an object moving relative to the earth's surface. The navigation information (position, speed and orientation) of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is needed to control its flight. Since the resistance of INS to interferences is very high, it is possible to ensure reliable flights in conditions of high-intensity noise. This article explores the principles of constructing inertial measurement units (IMU) that are part of the INS and indicates perspective directions for their development. Micro-electromechanical inertial measurement units were studied in this work, and functional and principal electrical circuits for connecting units of inertial measurements to the microcontroller were developed. The results of practical measurements of units without calibration and after calibration were obtained using the created laboratory device. Based on the obtained results, the necessity of sensor calibration was revealed, and accuracy was improved by performing calibration with the Kalman filter algorithm. The Kalman filter is the heart of the navigation system. In a low-cost system, IMU errors like bias, scale factor error and random walk noise dominate the INS error growth.