Evaluation of MEMS accelerometer and gyroscope for orientation tracking nutrunner functionality

Sammanfattning: In the production industry, quality control is of importance. Even though today's tools provide a lot of functionality and safety to help the operators in their job, the operators still is responsible for the final quality of the parts. Today the nutrunners manufactured by Atlas Copco use their driver to detect the tightening angle. There- fore the operator can influence the tightening by turning the tool clockwise or counterclockwise during a tightening and quality cannot be assured that the bolt is tightened with a certain torque angle. The function of orientation tracking was de- sired to be evaluated for the Tensor STB angle and STB pistol tools manufactured by Atlas Copco. To be able to study the orientation of a nutrunner, practical exper- iments were introduced where an IMU sensor was fixed on a battery powered nutrunner. Sensor fusion in the form of a complementary filter was evaluated. The result states that the accelerometer could not be used to estimate the angular dis- placement of tightening due to vibration and gimbal lock and therefore a sensor fusion is not possible. The gyroscope by itself can be used to provide the angular displacement around every axis with high accuracy without taking into account the gimbal lock phenomena or external forces in the form of vibration of the tool. The gyroscope provided data with a probability to measure ±1° in future tightenings by 69,76%. The gyroscope provided data with high accuracy and stability and can be used in real world application and production for true angle functionality of the tools.