Working with Inertial Measurement Units
An inertial measurement unit (IMU) is an electronic device that measures velocity, orientation, and gravitational forces using a combination of accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers. IMUs have a lot of applications in robotics; some of the applications are applied in balancing of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and robot navigation.
In this section, we will discuss the role of IMUs in mobile robot navigation and some of the latest IMUs on the market and their interfacing with Launchpad.
Inertial navigation
An IMU provides acceleration and orientation relative to inertial space. If you know the initial position, velocity, and orientation, you can calculate the velocity by integrating the sensed acceleration and the second integration gives the position. To get the correct direction of the robot, the orientation of the robot is required; this can be obtained by integrating sensed angular velocity from a gyroscope.
The following diagram illustrates...
