A novel approach for attitude estimation using MEMS inertial sensors

In this paper a new method for attitude estimation using low-cost MEMS inertial sensors is developed, in order to obtain accurate attitude parameters when other external sensors such as magnetometer and GPS are limited in operation. The method is based on specific rotation of the inertial measurement unit independent from rigid body motion. An algorithm is developed by incorporating a nonlinear observer in order to fusing measurements from both the gyroscope and the accelerometers. The algorithm provides bias estimation of the gyroscope and better estimation results. Experiments validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.