title: A New Analytic Alignment Method for a SINS.
abstract: Analytic alignment is a type of self-alignment for a Strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) that is based solely on two non-collinear vectors, which are the gravity and rotational velocity vectors of the Earth at a stationary base on the ground. The attitude of the SINS with respect to the Earth can be obtained directly using the TRIAD algorithm given two vector measurements. For a traditional analytic coarse alignment, all six outputs from the inertial measurement unit (IMU) are used to compute the attitude. In this study, a novel analytic alignment method called selective alignment is presented. This method uses only three outputs of the IMU and a few properties from the remaining outputs such as the sign and the approximate value to calculate the attitude. Simulations and experimental results demonstrate the validity of this method, and the precision of yaw is improved using the selective alignment method compared to the traditional analytic coarse alignment method in the vehicle experiment. The selective alignment principle provides an accurate relationship between the outputs and the attitude of the SINS relative to the Earth for a stationary base, and it is an extension of the TRIAD algorithm. The selective alignment approach has potential uses in applications such as self-alignment, fault detection, and self-calibration.
authors.affiliation: School of Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China. tancm314@hotmail.com.
authors.forename: Caiming
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Tan
authors.affiliation: School of Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China. zhuxinhua@mail.njust.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Xinhua
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: School of Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China. suyan@mail.njust.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Su
authors.affiliation: School of Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China. wangyu.njust@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China. wuzhiqiang@mail.njust.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Zhiqiang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Essex CO4 3SQ, UK. dgu@essex.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Dongbing
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gu
keywords: SINS; TRIAD; analytic alignment; initial alignment; self-alignment