POSITIONING APPARATUS AND POSITIONING METHOD

• US 20120232792A1
• Filed: 03/07/2012
• Published: 09/13/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 03/08/2011
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Seiko Epson Corporation (Seiko Group)
• Original Assignee: Seiko Epson Corporation (Seiko Group)
• Inventors: Ding, Yimei, Uchida, Shuji
• Application Number:
  US13/414,628
• Publication Number:
  US 20120232792A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 701/472
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/165 combined with non-inertial navigation instruments
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/49 whereby the further system is an inertial position system, e.g. loosely-coupled

Abstract

A positioning apparatus includes: a unit that calculates an inertial navigation positioning result by performing position calculation using inertial sensor data and stores the inertial navigation positioning result in a storage unit with time information being added to the inertial navigation positioning result; a unit that calculates a GPS positioning result by using GPS positioning data; a unit that performs a coupling process for the GPS positioning result and the inertial navigation positioning result, which is stored in the storage unit, having the same time information as time when the GPS positioning data is acquired; a unit that corrects the inertial navigation positioning result stored in the storage unit based on information of a position error, an attitude error, a velocity error, and a bias error of the inertial sensor that are acquired through the coupling process.

Claims

1. A positioning apparatus comprising:

a unit that calculates an inertial navigation positioning result by performing position calculation using inertial sensor data and stores the inertial navigation positioning result in a storage unit with time information being added to the inertial navigation positioning result;

a unit that calculates a GPS positioning result by using GPS positioning data;

a unit that performs a coupling process for the GPS positioning result and the inertial navigation positioning result, which is stored in the storage unit, having same time information as time when the GPS positioning data is acquired;

a unit that corrects the inertial navigation positioning result stored in the storage unit based on information of a position error, an attitude error, a velocity error, and a bias error of the inertial sensor that are acquired through the coupling process.

2. The positioning apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the coupling process includes a Karman filter process of the inertial navigation positioning result and the GPS positioning result.

3. The positioning apparatus according to claim 1, wherein an operation of the unit that corrects the inertial navigation positioning result stored in the storage unit includes estimating the positioning error, the attitude error, the velocity error, and the bias error and correcting the inertial navigation positioning result based on the positioning error, the attitude error, the velocity error, and the bias error.

4. The positioning apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the position calculation using the inertial sensor data is performed more frequently than the GPS positioning using the GPS positioning data.

5. The positioning apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the inertial sensor data is data that is measured by at least one of an acceleration sensor and a gyro sensor.

6. A positioning method comprising:

calculating an inertial navigation positioning result by performing position calculation using inertial sensor data and storing the inertial navigation positioning result in a storage unit with time information being added to the inertial navigation positioning result;

calculating a GPS positioning result by using GPS positioning data;

estimating a position error, an attitude error, a velocity error, and a bias error of the inertial sensor by coupling the GPS positioning result and the inertial navigation positioning result, which is stored in the storage unit, having the same time information as time when the GPS positioning data is acquired;

correcting the inertial navigation positioning result stored in the storage unit based on the position error, the attitude error, the velocity error, and the bias error.