Industrial inertial measurement units improve navigation and reliability in autonomous machines

Analog Devices offers a series of five high-performance inertial measurement units (IMUs) that address the navigation and safety-related needs of industrial applications in several emerging markets, while also reducing their system complexity and cost. The ADIS16470, ADIS16475 and ADIS16477 IMUs deliver exceptional performance improvements in smallest size with standard surface mount assembly. The three different models are optimized to provide a range of performance, cost, and application-suitability needs. The ADIS16465 and ADIS16467 IMUs offer similar performance advantages in a more ruggedized enclosure option. Together, these product advancements bring a previously unavailable performance-for-cost ratio to UAV applications where designers have previously struggled with costly, risky, and sub-par performance solutions from integrating consumer grade sensors, which also fell short of reliability goals. These new IMUs bring the same benefits to autonomous machine applications in fields such as smart agriculture where the demands of such rugged equipment previously forced a choice between cost-challenged, highest-grade sensors or performance-limited commercial sensors. All of the IMUs provide six DoF sensing via triple-axis MEMS-based accelerometers and gyroscopes, and are focused on the demands of the Industrial ‘Internet of Moving Things’ and its need for precise geolocation. Their performance allows systems to characterize motion accurately despite turbulence, vibration, wind, temperature, and other environmental disturbances, resulting in more-accurate navigation and guidance, and/or instrument stabilization. The ADIS1646x and ADIS1647x IMUs are specifically designed to reject what are otherwise significant error sources, such as ‘g’-influence, cross-axis sensitivity, and temperature and mechanical stress related drifts.