Using magnetic disturbances to improve IMU-based position estimation

Abstract

We address the problem of position estimation for a rigid body using an inertial measurement unit (IMU). In this paper, we present a Kalman filtering technique which takes advantage of the magnetic disturbances usually observed indoors. This is an important topic for military operations in urban areas where GPS is often unavailable. This approach yields significant improvements in estimation accuracy. We illustrate our technique with several experimental results obtained with a low cost IMU.