Novel Noncontinuous Carouseling Approaches for MEMS-Based North Seeking Using Kalman Filter: Theory, Simulations, and Preliminary Experimental Evaluation

This article proposes two novel strategies to estimate the complete attitude of a stationary body, exploiting the measurements of a commercial micro electromechanical system composed of a triaxial gyroscope and a triaxial accelerometer. These methods, both based on the Kalman Filter framework, can solve the problem of the North seeking with high accuracy, without the use of digital magnetic compasses or fiber optic gyrosopes. The first method, called one axis carouseling, is an extension of the classic carouseling approach, and makes use of a noncontinuous rotation about one axis and of an active roll and pitch compensation system. The two axes carouseling is based on two noncontinuous rotations about different axes. Both methods have been validated with simulation tests, based on real sensor and rotary stages characteristics, where the body heading was estimated with high accuracy after convergence. Preliminary experimental tests with the novel one axis strategy have been performed; the results are very promising in light of future developments.