Filtering Techniques for Estimating the Angular Motion Using All-Accelerometers

Abstract

Linear accelerometers can be used to retrieve the angular motion of the body they are attached to if their measurements are handled in an appropriate way. In this paper, an 18-accelerometer configuration is used to facilitate angular motion determination. Various measurement models are investigated where each model utilizes different accelerometers’ measurements. These models are used to build linear and nonlinear filters. The filters performances are evaluated and the associated sign ambiguity problem is solved. It is shown that a norm-constrained Kalman filters bank will give the best results. This work can be used within inertial navigation systems as a replacement of the gyroscopes.