Adaptive Estimation of Measurement Bias in Three-Dimensional Field Sensors with Angular Rate Sensors: Theory and Comparative Experimental Evaluation

Abstract

Abstract-Three-axis magnetometers and three-axis accelerometers are widely used sensors for attitude estimation, yet their accuracy is limited by sensor measurement bias. This paper reports a novel methodology for estimating the sensor bias of three-axis field sensors (e.g. magnetometers and accelerometers). Our approach employs three-axis angular velocity measurements from an angular-rate gyroscope to estimate the three-axis field sensor measurement bias that, when properly calibrated, can significantly improve attitude estimation. We report three methods implementing this approach based on batch linear least squares, real time Kalman filter, and real time adaptive identification. Our methods impose less restrictive conditions for the movements of the instrument required for calibration than previously reported methods, do not require knowledge of the direction of the field (e.g. the local magnetic field) or the attitude of the instrument, and also ensure convergence for the estimated parameters. The proposed methods are evaluated and compared with the previously reported methods with numerical simulation and in comparative experimental evaluation with sensors onboard an underwater robot vehicle.

Field Sensor Bias Calibration With Angular-Rate Sensors: Theory and Experimental Evaluation With Application to Magnetometer Calibration

“…We note that unlike most previous studies of field sensor bias estimation, the present study reports a comprehensive comparison of the performance of the proposed novel approaches to the performance of several previously reported approaches. Parts of this study were preliminarily reported in [2]. The present paper includes several additional novel theoretical and experimental contributions that have not been previously reported.…”

Magnetometer Calibration Using Inertial Sensors

“…Furthermore, data from the gyroscope is hereby omitted. In [15] on the other hand, the problem is reformulated in terms of the change in orientation, allowing for direct use of the gyroscope data.…”

MEMS IMU navigation with model based dead-reckoning and one-way-travel-time acoustic range measurements for autonomous underwater vehicles

“…Since bias errors are known to drift over time, continuously updating and subtracting this bias error from a measurement can improve performance. Three angular-rate aided estimators [46] improved bias estimation over previous methods of the TWOSTEP [2] and the attitude-independent EKF [10]. Others have improved performance by using an EKF to estimate bias and scale factor errors for both accelerometers and gyroscopes after a calibration procedure [5].…”