Abstract

In this paper, a new coarse alignment algorithm is proposed for roughly determining the initial attitude of the vehicle. The algorithm, referred as two-step coarse alignment algorithm, computes roll and pitch angle of the vehicle using accelerometer outputs, and then determines yaw angle with gyro outputs. With the geometric relation between sensor outputs and attitude angles, the algorithm error is analytically derived and compared with the previous coarse alignment algorithm that computes a transformation matrix using accelerometer md gyro outputs simultaneously. The simulation is also performed by varying the sensor errors. The results show that the proposed two-step coarse alignment algorithm has better performance for east tilt angle.

Keywords

• initial coarse alignment;
• accelerometer;
• gyro;
• Euler angle;
• quaternion