Better motion control using

accelerometer/gyroscope sensor fusion

Gabor Paller
gaborpaller@gmail.com
Sfonge Ltd.
http://www.sfonge.com

Where were we?

Droidcon 2011, London: Motion recognition on

Android devices

http://mylifewithandroid.blogspot.com/2011/10/mypresentation-about-motion.html

Processing only the accelerometer for motion

recognition

Acceleration
Acceleration caused by the change
of velocity

Acceleration caused by
the change of direction

v1
dV

dV

v2
v2
v1

V
a=
t

Extract motion information from

accelerometer data

Accelerometer data is a vector, having 3 axes (x,y,z)

This vector has the following components:

Gravity acceleration

Pointing toward the center of the Earth

Value of about 10 m/s2

That's what we measure when the accelerometer is used to
calculate tilt

Any other acceleration the device is subject to

Added to the gravity acceleration

Disturbs tilt measurement in gaming (swift movements cause
acceleration) hence the reason for gyroscopes
Can be used for movement detection

Measured acceleration

Absolute value

x, y, z: acceleration vector components

g value of the gravity acceleration (can be
approximated as 10)

a= x +y +z g
2

Snap one
way
Movement starts: accelerating
Movement ends: decelerating

Droidcon 2011 flashback

Conclusions:

Power consumption is a problem

Some neat functionality can be implemented by doing
pattern recognition on the acceleration vector's absolute
value
In general case the gravity and motion acceleration
components cannot be separated
You can try to use an additional sensor like the gyro to help
the separation

Gyroscope

Very new phenomenon as gyroscopes suitable for consumer

electronic devices appeared very recently

First appearance: Wii Motion Plus accessory, 2009 June

First Android smart phone: Nexus S (end of 2010)

Pros:

Not sensitive to gravity

Cons:

Currently supported only by high-end Android phones

Drift problems (more about that later)

Compass

Measures the device orientation wrt. the magnetic vector of the Earth

This vector points toward the magnetic center of the Earth

It has a component that points to the magnetic North pole that's what we
use for orientation

Beware of the z component! (also called magnetic inclination). If the device

is not held horizontally, the downward vector element influences the
measurement

Pros:

Can be used to deduce gravity, not sensitive to motion acceleration

Widely available in Android devices

Cons:

Requires calibration

Sensitive to metal objects, magnetic fields (e.g. electric motors)

This time it is gyroscope only

Gyroscope

Gyroscope measurement data

Measures rotation around 3 axes

More exactly: measures rotation speed (angular
velocity) around the axes

v x=
t

Getting the rotation angle

Get the angle difference

=v x t

Get the absolute angle

' =+

Drift

Noise

Gyro as support sensor

Because of accumulating error, gyro alone can

be rarely used
But

The accelerometer has no accumulated error but

has the gravity component problem
The gyro has accumulated error but is not sensitive
to gravity

Sensor fusion: the use of multiple sensors so

that they compensate each other's weaknesses

Accelerometer-gyro fusion

The easy way

Use the virtual sensors that calculate gravity and

linear acceleration from multiple sensors

The hard way

Process raw accelerometer and gyroscope data to

yield the motion information you need

Virtual sensors

Gravity and motion acceleration

deduced from the accelerometer
and the gyroscope
Roll/pitch/yaw from the compass
Drift-compensated gyroscope

Drift-compensated gyroscope

The hard way

Why would you go the hard way?

Sensor fusion co-processing provided by the phone

is not precise enough or can have undesirable
properties (like auto-calibration in Nexus S)
Virtual sensors are not available (is there any such
case with gyro-equipped phone?)
You would like to understand how it works and what
to expect from built-in sensor fusion
Just for the fun of it :-)

What we want

Remember: accelerometer measures the sum

of gravity and motion acceleration
Kills two use cases:

If you need device tilt, the motion acceleration

component corrupts the measurement
If you want motion acceleration, it is impossible to
subtract the gravity acceleration in a general case

Separate gravity and motion acceleration with

the help of the gyroscope

Idea

Idea in words

Pick a reliable gravity vector measurement

(make sure that there's no motion then)
If you detect motion (more about later), rotate
the previous gravity vector using the gyroscope
data and use it as gravity vector estimation
Subtract this gravity vector estimation from the
measured acceleration this yields the motion
acceleration

Updating the gravity vector

estimation

The gravity vector estimation has to be updated

time to time as rotation angle errors accumulate
If we detect an acceleration measurement
where there is no motion acceleration, we can
take it as new reliable gravity vector estimation
Remember slide #7: if the absolute value of the
accelerometer output is close to the Earth's
gravity, we can assume that there's no motion
the gravity vector estimation can be updated
with the current accelerometer output

Implementation

Example program:
http://www.sfonge.com/forum/topic/exampleapplication-accelerometergyroscopeprocessing-android

Now what?

3D linear acceleration signal of a well-known motion

Recognizing motion

3D linear acceleration signals are not so

intuitive
Motion recognition:

Record acceleration pattern of reference motion

and compare with these references
Convert from acceleration domain to something
more intuitive like velocity

Accelerometer/gyroscope bias will become linearly

growing drift after you integrate the acceleration signal!

Walking with swinging hand

Walking with steady hand

Cutting corners

Conclusions

Each sensor has strengths and weaknesses

Combine them and they compensate each
other
Some sensor fusion is already built-in
If not don't worry, come up with your own, it's
fun!
Motion recognition based on 3D linear
acceleration signal is much more exact than
doing the same from 1D signal

Questions?