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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Gao, Yizhou, Barfoot, Tim
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.00371
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author Gao, Yizhou
Barfoot, Tim
author_facet Gao, Yizhou
Barfoot, Tim
contents We present a new method to combine several rigidly connected but physically separated IMUs through a weighted average into a single virtual IMU (VIMU). This has the benefits of (i) reducing process noise through averaging, and (ii) allowing for tuning the location of the VIMU. The VIMU can be placed to be coincident with, for example, a camera frame or GNSS frame, thereby offering a quality-of-life improvement for users. Specifically, our VIMU removes the need to consider any lever-arm terms in the propagation model. We also present a quadratic programming method for selecting the weights to minimize the noise of the VIMU while still selecting the placement of its reference frame. We tested our method in simulation and validated it on a real dataset. The results show that our averaging technique works for IMUs with large separation and performance gain is observed in both the simulation and the real experiment compared to using only a single IMU.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_00371
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Tunable Virtual IMU Frame by Weighted Averaging of Multiple Non-Collocated IMUs
Gao, Yizhou
Barfoot, Tim
Robotics
We present a new method to combine several rigidly connected but physically separated IMUs through a weighted average into a single virtual IMU (VIMU). This has the benefits of (i) reducing process noise through averaging, and (ii) allowing for tuning the location of the VIMU. The VIMU can be placed to be coincident with, for example, a camera frame or GNSS frame, thereby offering a quality-of-life improvement for users. Specifically, our VIMU removes the need to consider any lever-arm terms in the propagation model. We also present a quadratic programming method for selecting the weights to minimize the noise of the VIMU while still selecting the placement of its reference frame. We tested our method in simulation and validated it on a real dataset. The results show that our averaging technique works for IMUs with large separation and performance gain is observed in both the simulation and the real experiment compared to using only a single IMU.
title Tunable Virtual IMU Frame by Weighted Averaging of Multiple Non-Collocated IMUs
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.00371