Robust Design of Inertial Measurement Units Based on Accelerometers

This paper presents a robust design scheme for an inertial measurement unit (IMU) composed only of accelerometers. From acceleration data measured by a redundant set of accelerometers, the IMU proposed in this paper can estimate the linear acceleration, angular velocity, and angular acceleration of the rigid-body to which it is attached. The robustness of our method to the uncertainty of the locations of the sensors and the measurement noise is obtained through redundancy and optimal configuration of the onboard sensors. In addition, the fail-diagnostics and fail-safe issues are also addressed for reliable operation.