An Autonomous Land Vehicle Navigation System Based on a Wheel-Mounted IMU

Navigation errors due to drifting in inertial systems using low-cost sensors are some of the main challenges for land vehicle navigation in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-denied environments. In this paper, we propose an autonomous navigation strategy with a wheel-mounted microelectromechanical system (MEMS) inertial measurement unit (IMU), referred to as the wheeled inertial navigation system (INS), to effectively suppress drifted navigation errors. The position, velocity, and attitude (PVA) of the vehicle are predicted through the inertial mechanization algorithm, while gyro outputs are utilized to derive the vehicle's forward velocity, which is treated as an observation with non-holonomic constraints (NHCs) to estimate the inertial navigation error states. To establish a theoretical foundation for wheeled INS error characteristics, a comprehensive system observability analysis is conducted from an analytical point of view. The wheel rotation significantly improves the observability of gyro errors perpendicular to the rotation axis, which effectively suppresses azimuth errors, horizontal velocity, and position errors. This leads to the superior navigation performance of a wheeled INS over the traditional odometer (OD)/NHC/INS. Moreover, a hybrid extended particle filter (EPF), which fuses the extended Kalman filter (EKF) and PF, is proposed to update the vehicle's navigation states. It has the advantages of (1) dealing with the system's non-linearity and non-Gaussian noises, and (2) simultaneously achieving both a high level of accuracy in its estimation and tolerable computational complexity. Kinematic field test results indicate that the proposed wheeled INS is able to provide an accurate navigation solution in GNSS-denied environments. When a total distance of over 26 km is traveled, the maximum position drift rate is only 0.47% and the root mean square (RMS) of the heading error is 1.13°.