A Simple Observer for Gyro and Accelerometer Biases in Land Navigation Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a straightforward observer for estimating gyro and accelerometer biases in land navigation systems, simplifying implementation and tuning compared to traditional Kalman filter methods, with successful testing on a farming vehicle.

Contribution

A novel simple observer method for inertial sensor bias estimation that avoids complex matrix operations and simplifies tuning processes.

Findings

Successfully tested on a farming vehicle navigation system.

Achieved bias estimation with reduced complexity.

Improved ease of implementation and tuning.

Abstract

In various applications of land vehicle navigation and automatic guidance systems, Global Navigation Satellite System/Inertial Measurement Unit (GNSS/IMU) positioning performance crucially depends on the attitude determination accuracy affected by gyro and accelerometer bias instabilities. Traditional bias estimation approaches based on the Kalman filter suffer from implementation complexity and require non-intuitive tuning procedures. In this paper we propose, as an alternative, a simple observer that estimates inertial sensor biases exclusively in terms of quantities with obvious geometrical meaning. By this, any multidimensional vector-matrix operations are avoided and observer tuning is substantially simplified. The observer has been successfully tested in a farming vehicle navigation system.