Fault Detection and Isolation in Multiple MEMS-IMUs Configurations

Abstract

This research presents methods for detecting and isolating faults in multiple micro-electro-mechanical system inertial measurement unit (MEMS-IMU) configurations. First, geometric configurations with n sensor triads are investigated. It is proved that the relative orientation between sensor triads is irrelevant to system optimality in the absence of failures. Then, the impact of sensor failure or decreased performance is investigated. Three fault detection and isolation (FDI) approaches (i.e., the parity space method, Mahalanobis distance method and its direct robustification) are reviewed theoretically and in the context of experiments using reference signals. It is shown that in the presence of multiple outliers the best performing detection algorithm is the robust version of the Mahalanobis distance.