Micro-electromechanical system sensors in unscented Kalman filter-based condition monitoring of hydraulic systems

A condition monitoring system of mechatronic design using an easy-to-install micro-electromechanical system-based (MEMS) motion sensor is developed in this paper, since the joint encoders and resolvers that require mechanical joint modifications are not often a realistic option for mobile machines. This paper presents an unscented Kalman filter-based (UKF) condition monitoring scheme for leakage detection in hydraulic actuator systems using the joint sensor feedback. By comparing the UKF residuals of the developed MEMS sensor to the residuals of a highly accurate reference encoder, we show that the developed easy-to-install and low-cost MEMS sensor is suitable for this condition monitoring task.