A new scheme of non-gyro inertial measurement unit for estimating angular velocity

The non-gyro inertial measurement unit (NGIMU) uses only accelerometers replacing gyroscopes to compute the motion of a moving body. To alleviate the accumulation of angular velocity error attributed to accelerometers error, a novel design scheme for a NGIMU is proposed along with its mathematic model. Based on the conventional six-accelerometer cube configuration, this scheme employs a nine-accelerometer configuration scheme and obtains the correct sign by exploiting the redundant information of the accelerometers and integrating the angular acceleration value. The accurate angular velocity can be calculated as square root of the square expression of the angular velocity. Simulation results show that the computational accuracy of angular velocity can be improved and confirm the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed design scheme.