Date of Award
Summer 2015
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Electrical Engineering
First Advisor
Bishop, Robert H.
Second Advisor
Yaz, Edwin E.
Third Advisor
Jeutter, Dean C.
Abstract
The fast paced development of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) technology in recent years has resulted in the availability of low cost gyroscopes and accelerometers in commercial markets. These sensors can be integrated into a single device known as an inertial measurement unit (IMU). An IMU is capable of tracking and navigating a vehicle for a short period of time in the absence of external position and attitude updates. The precision of the manufacturing techniques used to fabricate commercial MEMS sensors as well as their mechanical nature result in noise and errors that limit their performance. It has been mathematically shown that combining many MEMS sensors into a single device results in improved performance characteristics which are unattainable using a single MEMS sensor. The primary aim of this thesis is to design and validate the performance of a prototype IMU composed of a cluster of individual MEMS IMUs. The secondary aim of this thesis is to derive and validate a set of computationally inexpensive coning and sculling algorithms to mitigate dead-reckoning errors resulting from high frequency motion of the vehicle.