Development of Attitude Heading Reference System based on MEMS for High Speed Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

This paper proposes the performance evaluation test of attitude heading reference system (AHRS) suitable for small high speed autonomous underwater vehicle(AUV). Although IMU can provides the detail attitude information, it is sometime not suitable for small AUV with short operation time in view of price and the electrical power consumption. One of alternative for tactical grade IMU is the AHRS based micro-machined electro mechanical system(MEMS) which can overcome many problems that have inhibited the adoption of inertial system for small AUV such as cost and power consumption. A cost effective and small size AHRS which incorporates measurements from 3-axis MEMS gyroscopes, accelerometers, and 3-axis magnetometers has been developed to provide a complete attitude solution for AUV and the attitude calculation algorithm is derived based the coordinate transform equation and Kalman filter. The developed AHRS was validated through various performance tests as like the magnetometer calibration, operating experiments using land mobile vehicle and flight motion simulator (FMS). The test of magnetometer calibration shows the developed MEMS AHRS is robust to the external magent field change and the test with land vehicle proves the leveling error of developed MEMS AHRS is below . The results of FMS test shows the fact that AHRS provides the measurement with error during 5 minutes operation time. These results of performance evaluation tests showed that the developed AHRS provides attitude information which error of roll and pitch are below and the error of yaw is below and satisfies the required specification. It is expected that developed AHRS can provide the precise attitude measurement under sea trial with real AUV.