Responsiveness and Precision of Digital IMUs under Linear and Curvilinear Motion Conditions for Local Navigation and Positioning in Advanced Smart Mobility

Sensors based on MEMS technology, in particular Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs), when installed on vehicles, provide a real-time full estimation of vehicles’ state vector (e.g., position, velocity, yaw angle, angular rate, acceleration), which is required for the planning and control of cars’ trajectories, as well as managing the in-car local navigation and positioning tasks. Moreover, data provided by the IMUs, integrated with the data of multiple inputs from other sensing systems (such as Lidar, cameras, and GPS) within the vehicle, and with the surrounding information exchanged in real time (vehicle to vehicle, vehicle to infrastructure, or vehicle to other entities), can be exploited to actualize the full implementation of “smart mobility” on a large scale. On the other hand, “smart mobility” (which is expected to improve road safety, reduce traffic congestion and environmental burden, and enhance the sustainability of mobility as a whole), to be safe and functional on a large scale, should be supported by highly accurate and trustworthy technologies based on precise and reliable sensors and systems. It is known that the accuracy and precision of data supplied by appropriately in-lab-calibrated IMUs (with respect to the primary or secondary standard in order to provide traceability to the International System of Units) allow guaranteeing high quality, reliable information managed by processing systems, since they are reproducible, repeatable, and traceable. In this work, the effective responsiveness and the related precision of digital IMUs, under sinusoidal linear and curvilinear motion conditions at 5 Hz, 10 Hz, and 20 Hz, are investigated on the basis of metrological approaches in laboratory standard conditions only. As a first step, in-lab calibrations allow one to reduce the variables of uncontrolled boundary conditions (e.g., occurring in vehicles in on-site tests) in order to identify the IMUs’ sensitivity in a stable and reproducible environment. For this purpose, a new calibration system, based on an oscillating rotating table was developed to reproduce the dynamic conditions of use in the field, and the results are compared with calibration data obtained on linear calibration benches.