System and method for time synchronized fusion of multiple inertial sensors
AssigneeSTMicroelectronics International N.V.
InventorsSwapnil Sayan SAHA, Denis CIOCCA, Mahesh CHOWDHARY
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Abstract
A sensor system includes a plurality of inertial measurement units (IMU) and a control circuit. The control circuit is configured to receive sensor data from each of the inertial measurement units two alignment the timestamps of the sensor data, and to fuse the sensor data from the various IMUs. The control circuit detects whether the sensor data indicates a high degree movement or a low degree of movement and selects a high dynamic fusion process or a low dynamic fusion process based on the detected degree of movement.
Claims21
A method, comprising:
- generating sensor data with each of a plurality of inertial measurement units of a sensor system;
- aligning timestamps of the sensor data;
- determining a level of motion represented by the sensor data;
- selecting a sensor data fusion process from a plurality of sensor data fusion processes based on the level of motion;
- and
- generating fused sensor data from the sensor data by performing the selected sensor data fusion process.
A method, comprising:
- generating analog sensor signals with each of a plurality of inertial measurement units of a sensor system, wherein each inertial measurement unit includes a respective analog-to-digital converter and a respective first in, first out memory;
- generating, with each inertial measurement unit, digital sensor data from the analog sensor data with the analog-to-digital converter operated at a first clock frequency;
- receiving, for each inertial measurement unit, the sensor data from the analog-to-digital converter with the first in, first out memory operated a second clock frequency, wherein the first clock frequency is at least 5 times higher than the second clock frequency;
- and
- outputting, for each inertial measurement unit, the sensor data from the first in, first out memory.
A sensor system, comprising:
- a plurality of inertial measurement units;
- and
- a control circuit configured to receive sensor data from each of the inertial measurement units, to determine whether the sensor data indicates a low state of motion or a high state of motion, to fuse the sensor data with a low dynamics sensor data fusion algorithm if the sensor data indicates the low state of motion, and to fuse the sensor data with a high dynamics sensor data fusion algorithm if the sensor data indicates the high state of motion.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.