A research study aimed at developing a novel indoor positioning system is presented. The realized system prototype uses sensor fusion techniques to combine information from two sources: an in-house developed local Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radio-based ranging system and an inertial navigation system (INS). The UWB system measures the distance between two transceivers by recording the round-trip-time (RTT) of UWB radio pulses. Its principle of operation is briefly described, together with the main design features. Furthermore, the main characteristics of the INS and of the Extended Kalman Filter information fusion approach are presented. Finally, selected static and dynamic test scenario experimental results are provided. In particular, the advantages of the proposed information fusion approach are further investigated by means of a high dynamic test scenario.

This paper presents integration of ultrasonic and inertial approaches in indoor navigation system. Ultrasonic navigation systems allow to obtain good results whilst there are at least three beacon transmitters in the range of mobile receiver, but in many situations placement of large number of transmitters is not economically justified. In such situations navigation must be aided by other technique. This paper describes research on supporting ultrasonic system by inertial system based on Magnetic, Angular Rate and Gravity sensor. This can measure current orientation of the receiver and allows to estimate the length of the path by pedometer functionality.

The paper presents a method of calculation of position deviations from a theoretical, nominally rectilinear trajectory for a SAR imaging system installed on board of UAV. The UAV on-board system consists of a radar sensor, an antenna system, a SAR processor and a navigation system. The main task of the navigation part is to determine the vector of differences between the theoretical and the measured trajectories of UAV center of gravity. The paper includes chosen results of experiments obtained during ground and flight tests.

A method for evaluating the dynamic characteristics of force transducers against small and short-duration impact forces is developed. In this method, a small mass collides with a force transducer and the impact force is measured with high accuracy as the inertial force of the mass. A pneumatic linear bearing is used to achieve linear motion with sufficiently small friction acting on the mass, which is the moving part of the bearing. Small and short-duration impact forces with a maximum impact force of approximately 5 N and minimum half-value width of approximately 1 ms are applied to a force transducer and the impulse responses are evaluated.

This article presents a wearable system that localizes people in the indoor environment, using data from inertial sensors. The sensors measure the parameters of human motion, tracking the movements of the torso and foot. For this purpose, they were integrated with shirt and the shoe insole. The values of acceleration measured by the sensors are sent via Bluetooth to a smartphone. The localization algorithm implemented on the smartphone, presented here, merges data from the shirt and the shoe to track the steps made by the user and filter out the localization errors caused by movements the shirt and torso. The experimental verification of the algorithm is also presented.

Rotation modulation can significantly improve the navigation accuracies of an inertial navigation system (INS) and a strap-down configuration dominating in this type of INS. However, this style of construction is not a good scheme since it has no servo loop to counteract a vehicle manoeuvre. This paper proposes a rotary upgrading method for a rotational INS based on an inertially stabilized platform. The servo control loop is reconstructed on a four-gimbal platform, and it has the functions of providing both a level stability relative to the navigation frame and an azimuth rotation at a speed of 1:2◦/s. With the platform’s rotation, the observability and the convergence speed of the estimation for the initial alignment can be improved, as well as the biases of the gyroscopes and accelerometers be modulated into zero-mean periodic values. An open-loop initial alignment method is designed, and its detailed algorithms are delivered. The experiment result shows that the newly designed rotational INS has reached an accuracy of 0.38 n mile/h (CEP, circular error probable). The feasibility and engineering applicability of the designed scheme have been validated.

The paper presents methods of on-line and off-line estimation of UAV position on the basis of measurements from its integrated navigation system. The navigation system installed on board UAV contains an INS and a GNSS receiver. The UAV position, as well as its velocity and orientation are estimated with the use of smoothing algorithms. For off-line estimation, a fixed-interval smoothing algorithm has been applied. On-line estimation has been accomplished with the use of a fixed-lag smoothing algorithm. The paper includes chosen results of simulations demonstrating improvements of accuracy of UAV position estimation with the use of smoothing algorithms in comparison with the use of a Kalman filter.