Unmanned Systems Technology 011 | C-Astral Bramor ppX | IMUs | Autonomous farming | UAV Turbines UTP50R | London Show report | Advanced materials | Las Vegas Expo report

combination of control code and DSP code, which also allows an IMU developer to innovate with software. In addition, a real-time operating system (RTOS) can run on the microcontroller to provide a range of other data fusion capabilities. The controller board and RTOS can be used with different accelerometer and gyro sensors to provide a range of IMUs with different performance characteristics. The range of chips with the same controller core also support different interfaces such as SPI for UAVs or CAN for autonomous vehicles; the chips can include a single or dual core to handle a wider range of tasks. With this processing power the IMU can then act as the data fusion controller, taking in GNSS data and other information to provide more accurate position data. The calibrated output of the sensors is fed into a Kalman filter, and combined with the GNSS signal position and velocity data to provide the best position data. Everything is done in the Kalman filter using kinematic equations; one IMU developer provides different motion profiles as presets for the Kalman filter depending on the application. The RTOS can also be used to implement filters that reject outliers of the GPS signal: when an incorrect A larger IMU can provide more accurate position data, but the challenge for designers is to provide higher accuracy in smaller packages (Courtesy of SBG)