An Online Alignment Algorithm for Inertial Devices Applied to Mobile Robot Navigation

Dead-reckoning plays an important role in mobile robot's navigation. Inertial devices as the core sensors for dead-reckoning can obtain the complete navigation states. However, the accuracy of these navigation states suffers from a decline over time. Thus, the alignment of inertial device must be performed before navigation. The initial states of robot and the biases of inertial devices are the basic parameters that need to be aligned. Usually, the initialization of robot's position and velocity can be accomplished through external measurements, while attitude initialization relies on special alignment algorithms. In this paper, an effective alignment algorithm is designed for a mobile robot used in practical applications, in which both the robot's initial attitude and inertial devices' biases are considered. The measurements collected from a barometer and an odometer are used for alignment. The experimental results show that the proposed method can serve as an effective alignment for mobile robot's navigation.