Methods for improved heading estimation

• US 9,739,635 B2
• Filed: 06/12/2013
• Issued: 08/22/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 06/12/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: TRX Systems, Inc.
• Original Assignee: TRX Systems, Inc.
• Inventors: Funk, Benjamin E., Hakim, Dan, Karvounis, John, Young, Travis, Teolis, Carole
• Primary Examiner(s): Le, John H
• Application Number:
  US13/915,998
• Publication Number:
  US 20130332098A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,532 Days
• Field of Search: 702 92, 702 93, 702104, 701446, 701510
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 17/38 Testing, calibrating, or compensating of compasses
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 25/00 Manufacturing, calibrating, cleaning, or repairing instruments or devices referred to in the other groups of this subclass testing, calibrating or compensating compasses G01C17/38

Abstract

Methods for calibrating a body-worn magnetic sensor by spinning the magnetic sensor 360 degrees to capture magnetic data; if the spin failed to produce a circle contained in an x-y plane fit a sphere to the captured data; determining offsets based on the center of the sphere; and removing the offsets that are in the z-direction. Computing a magnetic heading reliability of a magnetic sensor by determining an orientation of the sensor at one location; transforming the orientation between two reference frames; measuring a first vector associated with the magnetic field of Earth at the location; processing the first vector to generate a virtual vector when a second location is detected; measuring a second vector associated with the magnetic field of Earth at the second location; and calculating the magnetic heading reliability at the second location based on a comparison of the virtual vector and the second vector.

Claims

1. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium comprising instructions that, when executed on a computing system of a person mounted portable device having a magnetic sensor for a compass and a gyro sensor, cause the computing system to at least:

calculate a tracking path for the portable device by obtaining tracking data along the tracking path comprising a plurality of tracking points, the tracking data including gyro data and compass data associated with the portable device;

transform the gyro data and the compass data into a navigation frame to compensate for tilt of the portable device;

compute a compass heading based on the compass data and a gyro heading based on the gyro data in the navigation frame;

determine a first drift based on a best fit line of a difference between the compass heading and the gyro heading in the navigation frame;

estimate compass calibration error by determining a second drift comprising;

sorting the compass data into bins based on compass angles associated with the compass data;

determining, for each bin, a weighted best fit line based on a compass reliability; and

determining an average slope of the weighted best fit lines of the gyro data subtracted from the compass data in each bin;

estimate gyro calibration error by calculating a gyro heading drift based on the first drift and the second drift;

update the gyro data and the compass data based on the estimated gyro calibration error; and

correct at least a portion of the tracking path using the updated gyro data and compass data.

2. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the best fit lines are generated based on a Hough transform.

3. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein a slope of a best fit line is attributed to drift.

4. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the instruction further cause the computer system to at least:

compute a confidence in the gyro heading drift based on entropy of a path taken by the magnetic sensor and the gyro sensor;

maintain the gyro heading drift if entropy decreases; and

reject the gyro heading drift if entropy increases.

5. The computer readable storage medium of claim 4, wherein the confidence is based on overlap in the path and straight segments in the path.

6. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions further cause the computer system to at least:

filter out the compass data with low reliability prior to when the instructions cause the computer system to transform gyro data and compass data into the navigation frame.

7. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions that cause the computer system to calculate the gyro heading drift based on the first drift and the second drift further cause the computer system to determine x-axis, y-axis, and z-axis offsets of the compass data and the gyro data.

8. The computer readable storage medium of claim 7, wherein the instructions that cause the computer system to determine x-axis, y-axis, and z-axis offsets of the compass data and the gyro data further cause the computer system to remove at least one of the x-axis, the y-axis, and the z-axis offsets.

9. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions further cause the computer system to display in a graphical user interface (GUI) the gyro heading and the compass heading.

10. A computer implemented method, the method comprises:

calculating a tracking path for a person mounted portable device having a magnetic sensor for a compass and a gyro sensor;

obtaining tracking data for the portable device along a tracking path comprising a plurality of tracking points, the tracking data including gyro data and compass data associated with the portable device;

transforming the gyro data and the compass data into a navigation frame to compensate for tilt of the portable device;

computing a compass heading from the compass data, and a gyro heading from the gyro data in the navigation frame;

determining a first drift based on a best fit line of the difference between the compass heading and the gyro heading in the navigation frame;

estimating compass calibration error by determining a second drift comprising;

sorting the compass data into bins based on corresponding compass angles;

determining, for each bin, a weighted best fit line based on a compass reliability;

determining an average slope of the weighted best fit lines of the gyro data subtracted from compass data in each bin;

estimating gyro calibration error by calculating a gyro heading drift based on the first drift and the second drift;

updating the gyro data and the compass data based on the estimated gyro calibration error; and

correcting at least a portion of the tracking path using the updated gyro data and compass data.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the best fit lines are generated based on a Hough transform.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein a slope of a best fit line is attributed to drift.

13. The method of claim 10, wherein the method further comprises:

computing a confidence in the gyro heading drift based on entropy of a path taken by the magnetic sensor and the gyro sensor;

maintaining the gyro heading drift if entropy decreases; and

rejecting the gyro heading drift if entropy increases.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the confidence is based on overlap in the path and straight segments in the path.

15. The method of claim 10, wherein the method further comprises:

filtering out the compass data with low reliability.

16. The method of claim 10, wherein calculating the gyro heading drift based on the first drift and the second drift further comprises:

determining x-axis, y-axis, and z-axis offsets of the compass data and the gyro data; and

removing at least one of the x-axis, the y-axis, and the z-axis offsets.

17. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

displaying the gyro heading and the compass heading in a graphical user interface (GUI).