Improved multi-position calibration for inertial measurement units

Calibration of inertial measurement units (IMU) is carried out to estimate the coefficients which transform the raw outputs of inertial sensors to meaningful quantities of interest. Based on the fact that the norms of the measured outputs of the accelerometer and gyroscope cluster are equal to the magnitudes of specific force and rotational velocity inputs, respectively, an improved multi-position calibration approach is proposed. Specifically, two open but important issues are addressed for the multi-position calibration: (1) calibration of inter-triad misalignment between the gyroscope and accelerometer triads and (2) the optimal calibration scheme design. A new approach to calibrate the inter-triad misalignment is devised using the rotational axis direction measurements separately derived from the gyroscope and accelerometer triads. By maximizing the sensitivity of the norm of the IMU measurement with respect to the calibration parameters, we propose an approximately optimal calibration scheme. Simulations and real tests show that the improved multi-position approach outperforms the traditional laboratory calibration method, meanwhile relaxing the requirement of precise orientation control.