An Integrated Low Cost GPS/INS Attitude Determination and Position Location System

Abstract

Advances in the technology of low cost solid-state inertial sensors have brought the price for a inertial measurement unit (IMU) down to the $ 10,000 level. Such an IMU, Systron Donners’ MotionPakTM, has been purchased by the Institute of Geodesy and Navigation (BEN) in order to develop an integrated GPS/INS attitude determination system. As GPS component for the integrated system, IfEN has selected the Trimble Advanced Navigation Sensor (TANS) Vector receiver system, which is a multi antenna attitude determination and position location system. IfEN has developed a realtime navigation software to calculate position, “velocity and attitude from the outputs of the MotionPak gyroscopes and accelerometers. These computed values are integrated with position, velocity and attitude information from the TANS Vector in a Kalman filter. Test results show that this system can achieve up to 0.1 degrees attitude accuracy (RMS). This Paper describes the low cost integrated GPS/INS System, including GPS and INS hardware, data acquisition and software.