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Development of a Special Inertial Measurement Unit for UAV Applications

Article  in  Journal of Dynamic Systems Measurement and Control · October 2012

DOI: 10.1115/1.4007122

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Khaled Hatamleh Ou Ma
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 Khaled S. Hatamleh
Mechanical Engineering Department,
Jordan University of Science and Technology,
P.O. Box 3030,
Irbed 22110, Jordan;
Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering Department,
New Mexico State University,
1040 S. Horseshoe Drive,
Development of a Special
Las Cruces, NM 88003
e-mail: kshh@just.edu.jo; kshh@nmsu.edu Inertial Measurement Unit
Ou Ma
for UAV Applications
Professor
e-mail: oma@nmsu.edu Dynamics modeling is becoming more and more important in the development and
control of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). An accurate model of a vehicle requires
Angel Flores-Abad good knowledge of the dynamics properties and motion states, which are usually esti-
Graduate Student mated with the help of integrated inertial measurement units (IMUs). This work develops
e-mail: af_abad@nmsu.edu a special six degrees of freedom IMU, which has the capability of measuring the angular
accelerations. This paper introduces the design of the new IMU along with its sensor
Pu Xie models and calibration procedures. The work introduces two experimental methods to
Graduate Student verify the calibrated IMU readings. The IMU was designed to support an on-line method-
e-mail: jackyxie@nmsu.edu
ology to estimate the parameters of UAV’s dynamics model that is currently being devel-
oped by the authors. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4007122]
Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering Department,
New Mexico State University,
1040 S. Horseshoe Drive,
Las Cruces, NM 88003

1 Introduction of these solutions still need a calibration process using accurate

Evaluation of a flight vehicle’s dynamics model requires the
full motion state information of the dynamics system; this
includes the position and altitude, linear and angular velocities,
and linear and angular accelerations of the flying vehicle. The
motion states can be obtained using appropriate sensors or sensory
units like Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) and IMUs. But most
of the existing IMUs do not measure all necessary time rate of
motion states.
IMUs are electronic devices capable of providing three dimen-
sional velocity and acceleration information at a high sampling
rate for the vehicle in which they are installed. They usually con-
sist of three accelerometers and three gyroscopes mounted on a
set of three orthogonal axes [1]. The recent development of ce-
ramic and silicon microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) tech-
nology offered lower power consumption sensors, which are less
expensive and more compact in size. This leaves the door wide
open for a variety of deployments; including but not limited to
medical applications [2,3], robotic sensing [4,5], posture tracking
systems [6–8], air-bag crash sensing, navigation, aerospace, tilt
measurement, vibration analysis, and IMUs.
It is true that the above development offered low-cost sensors,
but their quality was decreased. Development of IMUs from
cheap, off-the-shelf sensors puts the designer at odds with the
price of the unit and the accuracy of the measurements. People try
to introduce low-price solutions (softwares, data processing, feed-
back loops…) to obtain high accuracy, low-cost IMUs [8–12]. All
Contributed by the Dynamic Systems Division of ASME for publication in the
JOURNAL OF DYNAMIC SYSTEMS, MEASUREMENT, AND CONTROL. Manuscript received
October 23, 2010; final manuscript received April 29, 2012; published online Octo-
ber 30, 2012. Assoc. Editor: Eugenio Schuster.
and well-understood sensors. Much work has been done over
sensor modeling, calibration techniques, and error analysis
[6,9,13–15].
This work is part of a continuous effort to develop low-cost
IMUs. The need to develop a special 6-DOF IMU is justified in
Sec. 2; Sec. 3 describes the structure and components of the devel-
oped IMU. The adopted sensor models and the followed calibra-
tion procedures and results are detailed in Sec. 4. The description
of IMU’s readings verification tests and the obtained verification
results are discussed in Sec. 5, and the conclusions are provided in
Sec. 6.
2 Why A Custom Designed IMU?
Prior to the development of this new IMU, an earlier study [16]
introduced a method to model and estimate the unknown model
parameters of a general 6-DOF flying rigid body. The method
has been verified by simulations and is currently being tested
experimentally by means of a 2-DOF helicopter system (Fig. 1)
R
manufactured by QuanserV. The method requires measurements
of the helicopter’s position, angular velocity, and angular acceler-
ation information. The original helicopter system was equipped
with a pair of encoders to feedback the angular position informa-
tion around the pitch and the yaw degrees of freedom, which are
termed h and w, respectively. The system was modified exten-
sively to be able to provide the angular rate ðh; _ wÞ
_ and angular
€ wÞ
acceleration ðh; € information; details of the system and the mod-
ifications done can be found in Ref. [17].
The first derivative of the 2-DOF helicopter’s encoder signals
provides the angular rates, while the second derivative produces
the relative angular accelerations. This approach has been proven

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C 2013 by ASME
Copyright V

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Fig. 1 Quanser’s modified 2-DOF helicopter system
inefficient and inaccurate due to error propagation through the nu-
merical differentiation. This made it necessary to use sensors that
are able to provide the needed motion state and its derivative in-
formation. The angular rate information can be obtained directly
using a tri-axis rate gyro set. However, measurement of the angu-
lar accelerations is not that straightforward.
A review of the available sensors, algorithms, methods, and
error sources for the measurements of angular acceleration is
presented in Ref. [18]; four major acceleration techniques were
introduced, including the direct and indirect measurement
methods. There are few sensors that are able to provide direct
measurements of the angular accelerations; Ref. [19] presents a
piezoelectric based sensor that directly measures the angular
acceleration. Indirect angular acceleration estimation, on the other
hand, is more popular; examples are found in Refs. [14,20–23].
An indirect absolute angular acceleration method that relies on
the general relative linear acceleration equation has been theoreti-
cally discussed in Appendix A of Ref. [17]. It requires the knowl-
edge of the local acceleration components of at least three
different points of known relative positions, fixed at a rigid body
of known angular speed. Therefore, three tri-axis linear acceler-
ometers and two dual-axis rate gyros shall be utilized. Most of the
proposed indirect angular acceleration measurement techniques
are still under development and such a sensor is still commercially
unavailable. The available IMUs in the market, on the other hand,
are equipped with one tri-axis accelerometer, which does not meet
the requirements of the proposed indirect angular acceleration
method. This motivated the development of a custom designed
special 6-DOF IMU. The IMU is the lowest price solution,
specially suitable for the proposed indirect absolute angular accel-
eration measurement.
3 Components and Structure
The IMU shown in Fig. 2 consists of a Plexiglas base that holds
three tri-axis accelerometers (LIS3LV02DQ) [24], a 6300 (deg/s)
Fig. 2 The IMU prototype and its components
011003-2 / Vol. 135, JANUARY 2013
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Fig. 3 Schematic diagram of the sensors arrangement of the
IMU
dual-axis rate gyro (LPY530AL) [25], a 6300 (deg/s) dual-axis
rate gyro (LPR530AL) [26], a single high performance microcon-
troller (PIC24FJ64GA002), a 2.4 GHz wireless device (XBee),
and a (7.4 V, 1300 mhA) lithium polymer battery (Li-Po), which
is connected to a dc/dc voltage regulator. The IMU’s functional
flow block diagram is illustrated in Fig. 3. The accelerometers
communicate with the microcontroller through serial peripheral
interface bus.
The outputs of the two dual-axis rate gyros are connected to the
ADC input channels of the peripheral interface controller micro-
controller. The XBee sends the telemetry back to the ground sta-
tion at a speed of 57,600 bits per second (bps).
The telemetry of the IMU is saved in a data file; specifically, in
a series of 32 bytes long hexadecimal data frames. Each frame
contains the acceleration components measured along the sensitiv-
ity axes (xak, yak, zak) of the three accelerometers, (k ¼ 1, 2, 3).
Every accelerometer reserves 6 bytes of the total frame size. In
addition, the frame contains the angular velocity readings of the
two dual-axis rate gyros, followed by the frame’s sampling time;
4 bytes are required for each dual-axis rate gyro, while 2 bytes are
reserved for the frame’s sampling time. The data frame starts with
the Hex number (0X4141) (2 bytes) and ends by the Hex number
(0X5A5A) (another 2 bytes). A successful data frame will look
similar to the one shown in Fig. 4.
The IMU is capable of providing the telemetry at a sampling
frequency of about 56 Hz. The saved text files are processed by a
R
MatLabV code to extract the angular rate and linear acceleration
values.
4 IMU Calibration
It has been stated earlier in Sec. 2, that the calibration of
the IMU’s sensors is mandatory to guarantee the measurement
accuracy. The calibration process was performed over all the
accelerometers and the two dual-axis rate gyros. The procedures
followed are similar to those found in Refs. [27,28]; where a lin-
ear model (Fig. 5) of the accelerometers and the rate gyros was
assumed. An illustration of the modeling equations, procedures,
and equipment used are described below.
Fig. 4 The IMU’s data structure
Transactions of the ASME
 4.1 Accelerometers Calibration. According to the assumed
linear model, one can express the measured acceleration compo-
nents by accelerometer k as

~sak ¼ Kak sak þ bak þ vak (1)

Fig. 5 Sensor linear model
where ~sak is the (3  1) vector that represents the local accelera-
T
tion components ½ akx aky akz  measured along accelerometer
k sensitivity axes. vak is the measurement noise term,
Kak ¼ diag(kakx, kaky, kakz) is the (3  3) diagonal scale factor
matrix that includes the scaling factors along the sensitivity axes
of accelerometer k. bak ¼ ½ bakx baky bakz T is the (3  1) bias
vector along accelerometer k sensitivity axes, and sak is the
(3  1) vector of the real acceleration components applied at
accelerometer k.
The values of Kak, bak, and vak are all unknown prior to calibra-
tion, and the value of ~sak is obtained directly from the accelerome-
ter readings. The sak term, or the so called reference acceleration
value, is assumed to be known as it is controlled by the experi-
mental setup of the calibration process. The purpose of the
calibration process is to estimate the values of Kak and bak. This
Fig. 6 Accelerometer calibration platform usually needs a set of multiple accelerometer readings at several
applied reference acceleration values. The Earth’s field of gravity
(g) was used as the reference value for the calibration process.
An accelerometer was fixed onto a rotating table, accelerometer
calibration platform, that contains a manual handle to bring the ta-
ble into different angular positions with minute accuracy (Fig. 6).
The calibration concept is simple; the accelerometer’s x-axis,
xak (pointing up in position-1 of Fig. 7), theoretically reads g,
because the gravity field acceleration lies totally along its negative
direction. If the table, holding the sensor, is rotated into a new
angular position, such that the gravity field acceleration is at angle
br from the positive xak axis (position-2 of Fig. 7), then the gravity
field component along xak is defined as gx ¼ g cosbr.
The calibration platform with the attached IMU was rotated
into 37 different static locations, starting from b ¼ 0 deg, and end-
ing at b ¼ 180 deg, by an increment of 5 deg (Fig. 8).
Fig. 7 Schematic of a tri-axis accelerometer on the rotating Measured acceleration values along xak axis, at all 37 angular
table positions were recorded. The same procedures were repeated to

Fig. 8 IMU at different angular positions during the accelerometers calibration process

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 obtain similar records of the IMU measurements along yak and zak
axes; each time the IMU was flipped in the proper orientation,
such that, the axis of concern is pointing up at the initial angular
position of the calibration process. All of the accelerometers were
calibrated using the same rotating table, and under the same oper-
ating temperature. Ignoring the noise term of Eq. (1) yields

~sak ¼ Kak sak þ bak (2)

2 3 2 32 ak 3 2 3
s~ak
x kakx 0 0 sx bakx
6 s~ak 7 6 76 7 6 7
4 y 5 ¼ 4 0 kaky 0 54 saky 5 þ 4 baky 5 (3)
s~ak
z
0 0 kakz sak
z
bakz

which can be rewritten as

3
2
kakx
2 36 kaky 77 2 s~ak 3
sak
x 0 0 1 0 0 6
6 7
6 0 6 k 7 6 xak 7
0 1 07
akz
4 sak
y 0 56 7
6 b 7 ¼ 4 s~y 5 (4)
6 akx 7
0 0 sak 0 0 1 6 7 s~ak
z 4 baky 5 z

bakz

The calibration records, of every particular angular position, br,

were stacked into a similar format of Eq. (4); this includes calibra-
tion data along (xak, yak, zak) sensitivity axes of accelerometer k.
Data matrices of Eq. (4), for all 37 angular positions, were then
stacked into the linear regression system bkrk ¼ sk; where rk is the
vector that contains all the unknown scale factors and bias values
of accelerometer k, sk is the acceleration values recorded above by
accelerometer k’s sensitivity axes at all angular positions, and bk
contains the values of the known reference acceleration values
applied during the calibration process. Least squares is then used
to solve the linear regression equation system, namely

r k ¼ bþ
k sk (5)

Equation (5) was implemented three times to obtain the scale

factors and bias values for each accelerometer. The resulting
parameters are directly deployed to get estimates of sak using a
manipulated version of Eq. (2)
 ak 
sak ¼ K1 s  bak
ak ~ (6)

Figure 9 shows the calibration results along (xa1, ya1, za1) axes of
accelerometer 1. The calibration results of all accelerometers are
summarized in Table 1; the table shows the scaling factors and
bias values for all accelerometers operating at (25  C). Values
of the scaling factors are close to one, indicating the generated
accelerometer readings are very close to the applied reference
acceleration. The bias values, on the other hand, are enclosed in
the range of (0.033 to 0.0123) g.

4.2 Rate Gyro Calibration. Applying the same linear sensor

model over the rate gyro sensors produces

~ gg ¼ Kg xgg þ bg þ vg
x (7)
where x ~ gg is the (3  1) angular rate vector read by the rate gyro
set. xgg is the (3  1) vector of the real angular rate applied along
the nonorthogonal sensitivity axes of the angular rate gyro set.
Kg ¼ diag(kgx, kgy, kgz) is the (3  3) diagonal scale factor matrix
that includes the scaling factors along each sensitivity axis.
T
bg ¼ ½ bgx bgy bgz  is the (3  1) bias vector of the angular
rate gyro set, and vg is the angular rate measurement noise term.
The rate gyro calibration process requires a set of several rate
gyro readings at multiple applied reference angular rates. The ref-
Fig. 9 Calibration results of accelerometer 1 along (a) xa1, (b)
ya1, and (c) za1
erence signal was attained by means of a PI-controlled turn table,
rate gyros calibration platform, designed by the research group
members, which is capable of rotating at different reference angu-
lar rates in the range of 64.1888 rad/s.
Figure 10 shows the prototyped table with the IMU mounted
on top of the rotating disk. Records of angular rate gyro set
were obtained as the reference angular rate was varied from

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 Table 1 Accelerometers calibration process results

Accelerometer k¼1 k¼2 k¼3

kakx 1.0189 1.0243 1.0212

kaky 1.0183 1.0156 1.0171
kakz 1.0087 1.011 1.0055
bakx(g) 0.0123 0.0037 0.0089
baky(g) 0.033 0.0140 0.0192
bakz(g) 0.0109 0.00580 0.0256

Fig. 11 Platform and rate gyro axes frame

 1
~ gg ¼ Kg Tpg
x xpp þ bg (10)
2 3 2 32 31 2 g 3 2 3
~ gx
x kgx 0 0 1 0 czy xx bgx
6 ~g 7 6 76 7 6 7 6 7
4 xy 5 ¼ 4 0 kgy 0 54 0 1 czx 5 4 xgy 5 þ 4 bgy 5
~ gz
x 0 0 kgz 0 0 1 g
xz bgz

This can be rewritten into

Fig. 10 Rate Gyro Calibration Platform with IMU on top 2 3
kgx
6 kgx c 7
6 zy 7
4.1888 rad/s to þ4.1888 rad/s, by increments of 0.3491 rad/s. 6 7
2 36 kgy 7 2 g 3
About 23 reference angular rate values/rate gyro readings pairs xgx xgz 0 0 0 1 0 0 66
7
7 ~x
x
were recorded. This process was repeated three times for three 6 76 kgy czx 7 6 ~ g 7
4 0 0 xgy xgz 0 0 1 0 56 ¼ x
7 4 y5
different IMU orientations in order to calibrate all rate gyro 6 kgz 7
0 0 0 0 xgz 0 0 1 66 b 7
7 ~ gz
x
sensitivity axes. When a tri-axis angular rate gyro set is con- 6 gx 7
structed using three single-axis angular rate sensors, a nonorthog- 6 7
4 bgy 5
onal coordinate frame (or angular rate gyro set’s sensitivity axes)
(xg, yg, zg) is created. Figure 11 shows this coordinate system bgz
mounted on the orthogonal coordinate axes (xp, yp, zp) of the plat- (11)
form. Due to sensor mounting imprecision, the two coordinate
systems will differ by a set of six small angles. Those angles are The data recorded at each reference angular rate value (total
needed to estimate the values of the angular rate, measured around of 23), during the rate gyro calibration process, were brought into
the set’s nonorthogonal sensitivity axes xgg , at the orthogonal plat- the form described by Eq. (11). All 23 (like Eq. (11)) matrices
form’s coordinates system; the estimated angular rate vector is were stacked into one linear regression format ðvz ¼ xÞ, ~ such
denoted xpp . The following equation maps the rate gyro set reading that v is built up from 23 stacks of the matrix
into the platform’s coordinates system [29]: 2 g 3
xx xgz 0 0 0 1 0 0 
0 1 4 0 0 xgy xgz 0 0 1 0 5, where z ¼ kgx kgx czy
1 cyz czy
0 0 0 0 xgz 0 0 1
xp ¼ Tg xg ; Tg ¼ @ cxz
p p g p
1 czx A (8)
cxy cyx 1 kgy kgy czx kgz bgx bgy bgz T is the vector that contains all the
unknown values to be estimated, and x ~ is the (69  1) vector that
contains the stacks of the tri-axis rate gyro set readings recorded
where cij is the rotation of the ith angular rate gyro sensitivity axis during the calibration process. The linear regression system was
around the jth platform axis; Tpg is the rotation matrix that maps solved for the values of z using least squares
the angular rate vector from the set’s nonorthogonal sensitivity
axes into the platform’s orthogonal coordinates system [28]. z ¼ vþ x
~ (12)
Defining the platform coordinate system, such that its (xp, yp)
plane coincides with the plane mapped by the sensitivity axes of
the (LPR530AL) rate gyro board, reduces the total number of the The parameters obtained are deployed to estimate xpp using
unknown angles down to two; specifically (cxy, cxz, cyz, cyx) will be  
zero, and Eq. (8), reduces to xpp ¼ Tpg K1
g x~ gg  bg (13)
0 1
1 0 czy Figure 12 shows the calibration results along (xg, yg, zg) axes of
xp ¼ Tg xg ; Tg ¼ @ 0 1 czx A
p p g p
(9) the tri-axis rate gyro set. The rate gyros parameters are presented
0 0 1 in Table 2; the table shows the values of the scaling factors, the
biases and the misalignment angles of the (zg) axis from the plane
Substituting Eq. (9) back into Eq. (7) after ignoring the noise mapped by the (xg, yg) axes. The results were obtained at (25  C)
term, yields and the scale factors are close to one. The misalignment angles

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 Table 2 Rate gyro set calibration results

Name Value

kgx 0.96085
kgy 0.99822
kgz 0.98385
bgx(deg/s) 0.045084
bgy(deg/s) 0.071275
bgz(deg/s) 0.030396
czx(deg) 0.001564
czy(deg) 0.0126

Fig. 13 Top view of a disk rotating at x angular speed and a

angular acceleration

properly; this includes the verification of the rate gyro set and the
three tri-axis accelerometers. The research team performed two
experiments; the first experiment was done with a controlled rota-
tion table and the second dealt with a pendulum.

5.1 Verification Test With a Rotation Table. Figure 13

shows a top view of a table rotating at an angular speed, x, and
angular acceleration, a. A tri-axis accelerometer is shown on top
of the table. The acceleration components for such a dynamics
motion are the tangential acceleration, at, and the normal accelera-
tion, an [30], where

at ¼ ar; a n ¼ x2 r

If x is constant, then a ¼ 0, which leads to at ¼ 0; thus, the

Fig. 12 Calibration results of the rate gyro set along (a) xg
axis, (b) yg axis, and (c) zg axis
are very small, indicating a tiny physical tilt of the LPY530AL
dual-axis rate gyro, holding the (zg) axis from the plane of the
LPR530AL dual rate gyro that holds the (xg, yg) axes.
5 IMU Reading Verification
Before proceeding to any application experiment using the
IMU, one should verify that the calibrated sensors are reading
only active acceleration components will be the normal accelera-
tion, which will be projected at the installed accelerometer axes.
Now, by placing the IMU on top of the rate gyro calibration plat-
form and rotating the later at a known constant angular rate, one
can extract the normal acceleration components from (akx, aky) of
accelerometers k. In addition, the angular rate gyro set will feed-
back the applied angular rate value. The previous information,
along with the radial position of each accelerometer from the
center of the rotating table disk, are enough to verify the IMU
readings. When the IMU is rotated at a desired angular rate, xd,
the rate gyro set will feedback the measured angular rate, xm. The
difference, ex ¼ (xd  xm), represents the error in the IMU rate

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 Fig. 14 Top view of the experimental setup for the turn table
test

gyro set accuracy. The applied acceleration, on the other hand, is

read by each of the three installed accelerometers. The accelera-
tion value can be calculated by summing the squares of each
accelerometer’s readings. Mathematically
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
jak j ¼ a2kx þ a2ky

where akj is the reading of accelerometer k along its jth axis;

j ¼ x, y. But |ak| is also the sum of the squares of the tangential and
normal acceleration components
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
 2ffi
jak j ¼ a2kt þ a2kn ¼ a2kt þ x2m Rn (14)

where Rn represents the radial distance between accelerometer k

and the center of rotation. Notice that the acceleration values esti-
mated by the previous two equations are equal, and one can write
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
jak j ¼ a2kx þ a2ky (15)

Using Eqs. (14) and (15), an estimation of the tangential accelera-

tion can be computed by
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
 2ffi
akt ¼ a2kx þ a2ky  x2m Rn (16)

The closer the value to zero obtained by Eq. (16), the more accu-
rate the IMU readings are. One can define an error function for
the estimated akt as

eakt ¼ at  akt (17)

An extension arm was connected to the center of rotation of

the speed controlled turn table. The IMU was fixed on top of
the extension arm, such that, accelerometers (1, 2, 3) are at
(R1 ¼ 0.240 m, R2 ¼ 0.245 m, R3 ¼ 0.135 m), respectively, from
the turn table center of rotation (Fig. 14). The turn table was
rotated at multiple, clockwise and counterclockwise, constant
angular rates (3.8397 < xd < 3.8397) rad/s. Readings of the
IMU, (xm, akx, aky, akz), were used to calculate (akt) using
Eq. (16). The accuracy of the IMU readings was evaluated using
the error functions ea and ex. The results are provided in Fig. 15.
Fig. 15 Rotating table test’s error functions of (a) angular rate,
(b) at1, (c) at2, and (d) at3
5.2 Pendulum Test. In order to verify the IMU’s special
capability of angular acceleration measurement, a pendulum
based experiment was designed. Figure 16 shows a heavy metal the inertia distribution of the pendulum because (M  m). At any
disk of radius r and mass M hanged by a string of length L; The instance of the pendulum motion have the equation of motion
IMU of mass m is attached to the disk. The IMU will not affect about point O by

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 Fig. 17 Actual pendulum test when the disk was held at
ho 5 5 deg from the vertical axis
Fig. 16 Schematic of the Pendulum test setup

ðM þ mÞgl sin h ¼ IO h€ (18) ho ¼ A cosðkð0ÞÞ þ B sinðkð0ÞÞ (25)

ðM þ mÞgl sin h A ¼ ho (26)
h€ ¼ (19)
IO
similarly
where, IO ¼ IdiskþIMU þ (M þ m)l2 and
 2 since IdiskþIMU ¼ 12 ðM þ mÞr 2 ,
1 2
then one can write IO ¼ ðM þ mÞ l þ 2 r , where l ¼ L þ r. Sub- h_o ¼ Ak sinðkð0ÞÞ þ Bk cosðkð0ÞÞ (27)
stituting IO into Eq. (19), the angular acceleration equation in terms Bk ¼ 0 (28)
of h becomes
But k = 0 so B ¼ 0 and hence Eq. (24) reduces to
ðM þ mÞgl sin h
h€ ¼
(20)
1 hðtÞ ¼ ho cosðktÞ (29)
ðM þ mÞ l2 þ r 2
2
Equation (29) is used to simulate the pendulum angular motion.
Equation (20) needs to be expressed in terms of time to obtain the The first and second time derivatives of the same equation are
simulated/expected pendulum trajectories. This is done by consid- used to calculate the angular rate and acceleration, respectively,
ering the pendulum motion around a very small angular range of namely
5  h  5; where the system can be linearized, ðsin h ’ hÞ, and
ðcos h ’ 1Þ, to obtain h_ðtÞ ¼ ho k sinðktÞ (30)

ðM þ mÞgl h€ðtÞ ¼ ho k cosðktÞ

2
(31)
h€ ¼
h (21)
2
1 2
ðM þ mÞ l þ r The experimental pendulum was constructed using a 14.14 Kg
2
steel disk of radius r ¼ 0.1524 m. The disk was hanged by a spider
cord of length L ¼ 2.545 m from the top of the ceiling to the top of
which can be rewritten as the disk, when h ¼ 0. At the same angular position, a plumb bob
was hung from the bottom of the disk to the ground through a
h€ ¼ k2 h (22) distance h (Fig. 16). The IMU center of mass was aligned with the
disk center of mass over one face side of the disk, a counter
where weight, of about 0.327 Kg, was attached to the opposite face side.
vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi The pendulum was held at an initial position, ho, where the plumb
u gl bob hung down at a distance Y1, is touching the ground at a hori-
u
k ¼ u
(23) zontal distance X ¼ X1 along the X direction. The later horizontal
t 2 1 2
l þ r distance was used to determine the initial angular position, ho, of
2 the pendulum using the trigonometric properties of the geometry,
where X1 ¼ (L þ D)sin(ho) (Fig. 17).
The equation has the general solution of The frequency of the pendulum motion, k (rad/s), defined ear-
lier by Eq. (23), depends on the radius of the steel disk and
hðtÞ ¼ A cosðktÞ þ B sinðktÞ (24) the length of the spider cord. The period, T, of the expected
cyclic motion of the pendulum can be calculated using T ¼ 2p k ðsÞ.
The pendulum starts swinging from rest ðh_o ¼ 0Þ at the initial Figure 18 shows the simulated/exact angular position, angular
angular position (h ¼ ho) at t ¼ 0. The constants, A and B, are then rate, and angular acceleration trajectories during the pendulum
R
determined in accordance using the initial conditions and Eq. (24) motion. These data were generated by means of MatLabV using

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Fig. 18 Ideal trajectories of the pendulum motion
Fig. 19 Ideal and measured angular rate of the pendulum
versus time
Fig. 20 Ideal, estimated, and differentiated angular accelera-
tion data of the pendulum versus time
Eqs. (29)–(31). The measured angular rate of the pendulum, sup-
plied by the rate gyro set, matches very well (Fig. 19) with the
exact/simulated angular rate trajectory presented by Fig. 18.
Figure 20, on the other hand, shows that the estimated angular
acceleration estimated from experimental data has an excellent
match, in both the magnitude and frequency, with that calculated
from the theoretical pendulum dynamics model. The later
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observation verifies that the IMU is capable of providing accurate
estimate of the angular acceleration using the proposed indirect
angular acceleration method of Ref. [17]. Through all the experi-
ments, a low pass filter has been used to reduce the noise from the
raw measurement data.
6 Conclusions
A special IMU was designed in order to meet the requirement
of measuring not only the motion state but also the time rate of
the motion state. The IMU has been built, programmed, and cali-
brated to support the research on UAV dynamics model identifica-
tion. This paper described the design of the sensors, structure,
data processing, and communication components of the new IMU.
The calibration of the sensors, used by the IMU, was also intro-
duced in detail with a description of the calibration platforms and
test procedures. A pendulum experiment was designed to demon-
strate the IMU’s accurate angular acceleration measurement capa-
bility. The application of the newly developed IMU for in-flight
identification of UAV inertia properties is currently under way.
Acknowledgment
This research project was sponsored by the U.S. Air Force
through the Contract No. FA9200-06-D-0020 to the Physical Sci-
ence Laboratory (PSL) of the New Mexico State University. Spe-
cial thanks to Gerardo Martinez, Ken Ruble, and Brandi Herrera
for their gracious assistance with the design and fabrication of the
experimental hardware. Many thanks to Mr. Jesse McAvoy and
Mr. Laith Sahawneh for all the support and valuable technical
suggestions in some parts of this research.
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