Removing accelerometer redundancy in non-gyro inertial measurement unit

The research presented here aims to improve the sensory economy of an all-accelerometer inertial measurement unit (IMU). The authors will show that accelerometers are underutilised in this class of IMUs when they are attached to dynamically constrained systems. This scenario usually warrants one of two solutions; each being geared towards general unconstrained motion. In this paper, however, the authors show that the same constraints which limit the motion of the dynamic system can be leveraged to reduce the necessary resources constituting the IMU, hence improving its economy. It is shown that the proposed method manages to retain the advantages of the two common but distinctly implemented all-accelerometer IMUs previously mentioned. The viability of the new proposal is tested through simulation where it is implemented on a classic dynamic system which exhibits constrained motion, the inverted pendulum.