Attitude estimation for ground vehicles using low-cost sensors with in-vehicle calibration

Accurate vehicle attitude estimation requires biascalibrated sensors. The low-cost sensors typically found in industrial vehicles exhibit large time-varying biases. For periodic re-calibration, the sensor usually needs to be removed from the vehicle, which is both costly and time-consuming. In this work, we propose a ground vehicle attitude estimator based on the additive quaternion extended Kalman filter (EKF) with a simple in-vehicle accelerometer bias calibration procedure that can be performed by the end-user. Using a simple model based on wheel speeds and angular rates, accelerations of the vehicle can be estimated and compensated which increases estimation accuracy. The approach is validated through measurements on a real-world industrial vehicle and its performance compared to the state-of-the-art approaches with level-ground calibration and acceleration compensation.