Attitude determination framework by globally and asymptotically stable bias error estimation with disturbance attenuation and rejection

This paper presents a new methodology of attitude determination for cost-effective and small-size inertial measurement units, consisting of tri-axial gyroscope sensors, accelerometers and geo-magnetometers. Introduced for the algorithm development is a quaternion feedback structure, where bias terms in the gyroscope rate information, appearing in the phase-locked loop, are identified with the theoretical guarantee of the global and asymptotical stability. The bias-term identification and modification process is performed continuously without the influence of the disturbance by combining the proposed disturbance evaluation scheme and the conventional vector matching method. Practical validity of the presented framework is fully evaluated by experiments. The evaluation result shows that the approach in this paper can offer drift-free performance with property of disturbance attenuation and rejection under arbitrary high-frequency attitude test motion of spatial rotation and translation.