Accelerometer configurations for Gyroscope-Free Inertial Navigation

The recent application of MEMs accelerometers in automobile airbag deployment systems has led to an increase in their quality and a decrease in cost. This has motivated researchers to consider these accelerometers for use in inexpensive motion sensing systems. This thesis is chiefly concerned with Gyroscope-Free Inertial Navigation (GFIN), which involves using configurations of accelerometers to determine the motion of the body to which they are attached.;The major contribution of the thesis is a thorough investigation of the geometrical requirements for accelerometer configurations that are to be used for GFIN. In the past, researchers have used many different types of configurations without showing how they arrived at a particular design or why it should be preferred over any other. Two special classes of configuration are studied in detail. The first is suitable for measuring planar motion, and the second is dignified in that it uses the smallest possible number of accelerometers for measuring spatial motion. General configurations are also studied, and some very interesting geometry is uncovered.;A secondary contribution of the thesis is less theoretical. The consequences of placing accelerometers without geometric precision are studied using simple error analysis and simulations. It is shown that even very small placement errors will likely lead to very poor performance, and consequently, that GFIN is only practical if additional, non-inertial measurements are available. Simulations indicate that a possible application of GFIN could be the robust tracking of the motion of parallel mechanisms.