A Low-Cost Inertial Measurement Unit for Ship Motion Estimation

This paper presents the development of an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) tailored for maritime applications. Leveraging cost-effective MEMS sensors, the IMU integrates a 3-axis accelerometer and a 3-axis gyroscope. Utilizing a Kalman filter for roll, pitch, and yaw estimation, and an algorithm based on the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) for heave, sway, and surge estimation, the proposed IMU enables comprehensive motion analysis for ships. The proposed system efficiently manages all required data processing, and does not relies on the ship's infrastructure highlighting the feasibility of utilizing low-cost MEMS sensors and embedded systems for accurate and reliable motion estimation in maritime environments. The accuracy of the proposed system is experimentally determined by using a high-accuracy IMU as reference.