Exploiting Low-Cost Compact Sensor Configurations Performance by Redundancy

This paper proposes a solution that overcomes the limitations of the traditional calibration process. It consists of adopting a skewed sensor configuration: a certain number of sensor boards should be placed on the faces of a regular polyhedron. This configuration guarantees a partial selfcalibration of of low-cost commercial MEMS gyro biases placed on different faces of regular polyhedra. By adopting this redundant configuration, the level of accuracy of attitude and heading determination was increased by using low-cost and light-weight MEMS-based sensor boards. An extensive test campaign has been executed to acquire significant experimental data. Being low-cost and light-weight, a skewed configuration of SensorTileTM system manufactured by ST MicroelectronicsTM. It was used to perform the flight attitude and heading calculation for drones. Experimental results show that this redundant configuration guarantees the sensors’ bias selfcalibration, increasing the level of accuracy of attitude and heading determination. The paper will include a detailed description of the sensor integration configuration both in terms of mechanical assembly and integrated filtering techniques. Subsequently, indoor and outdoor tests will be presented. Test results will be discussed to highlight the overall integrated system performance.