Practical Trials of Fiber Optical Gyroscope Based Inertial Navigation System

Sammanfattning: There exists a need for inertial navigation systems within a multitude of applications, such as drones, unmanned vehicles, and guidance systems. Saab produces gyroscopes for stabilization purposes, but the gyroscopes could also be used as part of an inertial navigation system. This thesis investigate the viability of using the hardware and software that Saab already uses, with the addition of accelerometers which is sourced from Safran sensing technologies; as components in a inertial navigation system. A prototype inertial navigation system has been built, and a navigation algorithm has been implemented. The prototype has been calibrated on both sensor and system level. The sensors have been verified to lie well within the manufacturers specifications. It is possible to use the current hardware used by Saab for navigation purposes, as verified by measuring timing and computational load of the prototype system. However, there still exist a numerical error for the velocity and position calculation which requires additional development. Development and testing of the navigation unit will have to be continued outside the scope of this master’s thesis to determine how viable the system could be as a product used in actual applications.