Date of Defense

11-29-2005

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Dr. Frank Severance

Second Advisor

Dr. Ikhlas Abdel-Qader

Third Advisor

Dr. Liang Dong

Abstract

Accelerometer-based inertial navigation systems present an inexpensive alternative to gyroscope and global positioning navigation systems. An array of accelerometers comprises the basic design of the inertial navigation system. The position of the device can be continuously updated based on the previous device location and measurements of the device acceleration. There are fewer moving parts in an accelerometer-based system than in a gyroscopic device, and it is free of the earth bound constraints of a global positioning system. The prototype wirelessly interfaces with a data-collection system, which processes the data and provides a graphical display of the trajectory traveled.

Two accelerometer evaluation boards are being tested, the ADXL-320 from Analog Devices and the MMA6231Q from Freescale Semiconductor. The boards are attached to a remote controlled car, with a cable that runs to the A/D converter on a breadboard. The output of the accelerometer runs through the PIC18F2455 A/D converter, which will be sent on to the processing computer. The output from the accelerometer is sampled from only ±2g, to reduce quantization errors in the data. During the testing phase the data is stored on the HC12PG256 microcontroller.

Access Setting

Honors Thesis-Open Access

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