A New North-seeking Method Based on MEMS Gyroscope

In this paper, a new north-seeking method based on a low-cost Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) gyroscope sensor has been proposed, which can solve the problem of long measurement time and low precision in north-seeking application. With this method the system has achieved an accuracy of approximately 2o with respect to the North orientation. In order to achieve this accuracy, firstly we characterized the bias errors by using Allan variance; secondly an EKF filter was designed to compensate these errors properly, and finally the offset angle with respect to the North orientation was estimated properly by the experimental data. The results of experiment show that this new method is better than the universal north-seeking scheme in measurement time and the stability of the accuracy. Copyright © 2014 IFSA Publishing, S. L.