MoRPI: Mobile Robot Pure Inertial Navigation

Mobile robots are used in a variety of applications indoors and outdoors. In real-world scenarios, frequently, the navigation solution relies only on the inertial sensors. Consequently, the navigation solution drifts in time. In this article, we propose the mobile robot pure inertial framework (MoRPI). Instead of travelling in a straight line trajectory, the robot moves in a periodic motion trajectory to enable peak-to-peak estimation. Two types of MoRPI approaches are suggested, one is based on both accelerometer and gyroscope readings while the other requires only the gyroscopes. Closed form analytical solutions are derived to show that MoRPI produces lower position error compared to the classical pure inertial solution. In addition, field experiments were made with a mobile robot equipped with two different types of inertial sensors. The results show the benefits of using our approach.