Design of multi-sensor IMU for land vehicle

Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) to measure the angular rate and acceleration in three axes is an important part of the land vehicle navigation control system. Land vehicle motion has more wide range of acceleration in x axis and angular rate in z axis than the other axis. A sensor with high sensitivity has a short range of measurement, and vice versa. To get the optimum sensitivities of all sensors, multi-sensor system should be applied in wide range of motion. The main components of IMU are microcontroller, gyroscope, and accelerometer. Microcontroller received two accelerations data in x axis and two anguler rate data in z axis. Selecting algorithms of sensor data are used to obtain six Degree of Freedom (6-DOF) of land vehicle. IMU was tested using variation of acceleration and angular rate motion, and shown that the proposed method gives the angular rate and acceleration data with the higher sensitivity. IMU has good linearity of measurement in acceleration and angular rate. This system can be used to look at the driver when he accelerate or brake suddenly.