A Simple Observer for Gyro and Accelerometer

Biases in Land Navigation Systems

Vasiliy M. Tereshkov
(Topcon Positioning Systems LLC, Moscow, Russia)
(Email: [email protected])

In various applications of land vehicle navigation and automatic guidance systems,

Global Navigation Satellite System/Inertial Measurement Unit (GNSS/IMU) positioning
performance crucially depends on the attitude determination accuracy affected by gyro and
accelerometer bias instabilities. Traditional bias estimation approaches based on the Kalman
filter suffer from implementation complexity and require non-intuitive tuning procedures. In this
paper we propose, as an alternative, a simple observer that estimates inertial sensor biases
exclusively in terms of quantities with obvious geometrical meaning. By this, any
multidimensional vector-matrix operations are avoided and observer tuning is substantially
simplified. The observer has been successfully tested in a farming vehicle navigation system.

KEY WORDS
1. GNSS. 2. IMU. 3. Kalman Filter. 4. Bias Estimation

1. INTRODUCTION. The advent of compact and inexpensive Micro-Electromechanical Sensors

(MEMS) has led to the development of consumer-grade Inertial Measurement Units (IMU).
These devices have proved to be applicable in many areas unreachable for classical inertial
instruments. One of the successfully addressed problems is the navigation and automatic control
of various land vehicles. Whereas the primary positioning device for such vehicles is usually a
receiver of a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), the desired control performance is
achieved only if this receiver is integrated with an IMU or other sensors.
This problem is highlighted in some specific applications such as precision agriculture
where the aim is to guide an automated farming machine along a swath with minimum cross-
track displacement. The control problem is usually formulated for the “reference point” located
at the centre of gravity or in the middle of the rear or the front axle, depending on the vehicle
kinematics and the implement used. On the other hand, the GNSS receiver is installed atop the
machine cabin roof. Therefore, the position and velocity provided by the receiver are

1
substantially different from those observed at the “reference point”. The differences depend on
the continuously varying attitude angles that cannot be measured by a single GNSS receiver
(Thuilot et al., 2002; Jongmin, 2014). There appears a need for an IMU-based Attitude and
Heading Reference System (AHRS) integrated with the GNSS receiver (Topcon Precision
Agriculture, 2014; John Deere, 2014).
Among the error sources of such an integrated system, gyro and accelerometer biases
play a key role. MEMS devices are known to have large and unpredictable run-to-run and in-run
bias instabilities. For slope compensation in precision agriculture problems, only the longitudinal
and lateral gyros and accelerometers are of interest, as they directly determine the accuracy of
attitude computations (Salychev, 2004).
Consider a simple numerical example. Let the vertical displacement of the GNSS receiver
from the vehicle “reference point” be h = 3 m , and the vehicle roll angle caused by the terrain
slope be ϕ = 5 ° . If this slope is neglected, it results in a cross-track positioning error of
h sin ϕ = 26 cm . It is a dozen times larger than the GNSS inherent errors in the most precise
Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) navigation mode. Now suppose we combine this GNSS receiver
with a MEMS AHRS to compensate for the slope, but the lateral accelerometer has a run-to-run
bias of ba = 0.2 m/s 2 . This bias causes a roll computation error of ϕɶ = ba / g = 1.2 ° (where we

assume g = 9.8 m/s 2 ), so the corresponding positioning error will be h sin ϕɶ = 6 cm . It still
exceeds typical RTK errors, so the use of RTK is meaningless until the accelerometer bias is
estimated.
A traditional way to estimate gyro and accelerometer biases on-line is to apply the
Kalman filter (Farrell and Barth, 1999; Salychev, 2004; Ding et al., 2007). The AHRS is treated
as a multidimensional dynamical system with external measurements provided by its GNSS
receiver and IMU. Some of its state variables are identified with the attitude angles, some others
with the unknown gyro and accelerometer biases. Using the Kalman framework, all the state
variables are estimated as long as their observability conditions are satisfied.
The observability issue is very non-trivial. While gyro bias estimation does not require
any specific vehicle manoeuvres, accelerometer biases are completely unobservable in a straight
motion as they cannot be separated from the attitude errors. To make the estimation possible, the
vehicle should perform a series of turns (Salychev, 2004). This is an inherent property of any
AHRS and does not depend on the chosen estimation technique. Fortunately, a typical path of a
land vehicle is composed of straight segments and turns, so the estimation of accelerometer
biases can be successfully performed.

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 Besides the issues associated with the physical essence of the AHRS operation, there is a
practical problem with the Kalman filter itself. The universality of this estimation method is
achieved at the cost of implementation complexity. The filter requires an efficient framework for
manipulating multidimensional, often sparse, matrices and vectors. This is especially challenging
for embedded computer systems with very limited hardware resources. Moreover, Kalman filter
performance crucially depends on the a priori information. The designer should specify three
covariance matrices: one for the initial state uncertainty, and two others for the process noise and
the measurement noise. At least one of them, the process noise covariance matrix, has no clear
physical meaning and cannot be deduced from the sensor characteristics available to the designer
(Salychev, 2004). Therefore, in most engineering applications some laborious and non-intuitive
iterative procedures are needed to tune the Kalman filter. For the same reason, the Kalman filter
optimality, though guaranteed by theory, is rarely achieved in practice.

2. GEOMETRIC OBSERVERS. The search for a less demanding estimation method than the
Kalman filtering has led to the invention of a group of techniques which we call geometric
observers. What they all have in common is that the estimates of all desired variables are
expressed only in terms of quantities with clear geometrical meaning. These observers make use
of three-dimensional vectors in the conventional Euclidean space, and no multidimensional
vector-matrix operations are needed.
2.1. Attitude Estimation. Geometric observers for GNSS/IMU integrated navigation have
been developed from two completely different standpoints. The first approach (Shaw et al., 1981;
Salychev, 2012) is based on the deep similarities of error behaviour in gimballed and strapdown
inertial devices. To emphasise this fact, a notion of a “mathematical”, or “virtual”, gimballed
platform is introduced to study the operation of a strapdown AHRS. The direction cosine matrix,
updated by the AHRS computer, therefore describes the orientation of the vehicle body with
respect to this “virtual platform”. Furthermore, any attitude errors are treated as angular
deviations of the “virtual platform” plane from the true local level plane. To correct the errors, a
control angular rate vector is applied to the “virtual platform” unless these two planes coincide.
This control angular rate replaces the correction term of the Kalman filter.
The second standpoint is the group theory, from which a family of so-called “invariant”
observers can be derived (Bonnabel and Rouchon, 2005; Mahony et al., 2008). This research
area is very attractive and fruitful, yet the practical results are the same as obtained by the
“virtual platform” technique.
2.2. Bias Estimation. It is natural to equip a geometric attitude observer with a gyro bias
estimator (Mahony et al., 2008). In the steady-state operation, the averaged control angular rate
3
applied to compensate the effects of the gyro bias becomes equal and opposite to that bias. This
immediately determines the necessary observer structure. Nevertheless, to the best of our
knowledge, no one has succeeded in incorporating an accelerometer bias estimator into the same
observer. The only known attempt (Grip et al., 2011) seems to be impractical since it relies on
the squared norm of the measured specific force vector to determine its bias. This leads to
doubtful performance on noisy data.
In the following sections we will derive the unified estimator for gyro and accelerometer
biases in the context of a geometric attitude observer. The outline of this proposal (Tereshkov,
2013) suffered from some unnecessary restrictions imposed on the vehicle trajectory. In the more
general theory presented here, these restrictions are removed and a more feasible estimation
technique is developed.

3. BIAS OBSERVER DESIGN. We start the observer construction with several assumptions that
are reasonable in the context of precision agriculture applications:
A) The IMU is subjected to factory calibration, so the residual sensor biases are small, as
well as the attitude errors caused by these biases.
B) Farming machines typically move on nearly flat terrain, so the roll and pitch angles
and the corresponding angular rates are small; vertical accelerations are negligible compared
with gravity.
C) The vehicle does not suffer from sideslip and the GNSS signals are not blocked by any
obstacles, so the heading angle is perfectly known as the direction of the vehicle velocity
measured by the GNSS receiver.
D) The effects of Earth’s rotation and curvature are not taken into consideration.
Now, if we neglect all the products of at least two small values, we can arrive at a
linearized error dynamics model, from which the bias observer structure can be deduced and its
stability proven. Any possible violations of our assumptions, e.g., during the motion on a hill
slope, will not necessarily impair the practical performance of the observer but will of course
invalidate its theoretical justifications.
A serious challenge in the observer construction is to decide what available quantities are
suitable to drive the observer. The most obvious choice is to use the raw measurements provided
by the IMU and the GNSS receiver. Unfortunately, they are coupled with the sensor biases
through several complicated differential equations (Titterton and Weston, 2004), and this choice
returns us to the implementation problems we wished to avoid. Then, following the guidelines of
the geometric observers theory, we select the control angular rate to drive the bias observer. So

4
we now need to find how this angular rate is coupled with the quantities of interest, i.e., with
gyro and accelerometer biases.
3.1. Attitude Dynamics. Consider a strapdown AHRS that computes the direction cosine
matrix C between the body frame b = {xb , yb , zb } and the “virtual platform” frame

p = {x p , y p , z p } . The body frame is chosen such that xb points forwards, yb rightwards, zb

downwards. The “virtual platform” frame is slightly misaligned from the North-East-Down
frame n = {N , E , D} .
The matrix dynamics are described by the equation (Salychev, 2004)
ɺ = Cω⌣b ⌣ p
C b − ω pC (1)
Here a subscript denotes the frame for which the angular rate is specified, and the superscript
denotes the frame to which the rate is projected. Thus, ωbb is the body frame angular rate as

measured by the gyros, ω pp is the “virtual platform” control angular rate as seen from this

“virtual platform”. An arc denotes a skew-symmetric matrix corresponding to a vector, so that

ab = a × b .
⌣

Let us project the accelerometer measurements fb onto the “virtual platform”:

f p = Cfb (2)
For a perfect AHRS installed on a vehicle that moves on a flat non-rotating Earth (Assumption
D), the “virtual platform” lies in the local level plane, so that f p = fn . Therefore, the first two

components of f p = [ f N , f E , f D ]T contain only the actual accelerations, but not the projections of

the gravity vector g . If this ideal condition is violated and the “virtual platform” is not horizontal,
there appears a difference between the measured specific force f p and the true specific force

fnGNSS = vɺ GNSS
n − g . The latter is provided by differentiating the vehicle velocity v GNSS
n measured
by the GNSS receiver. The difference is fed back to the “virtual platform” in the form of the
control angular rate:
⌣
ω pp = −k p (f nGNSS − f p ) (3)

Here the vertical vector k = −k g / g represents the attitude correction gain, and the quantity

τ = 1/( kg ) is the correction time constant. Since in the perfect case ω pp = 0 , any variation of this

angular rate is equal to the rate itself: δ ω pp = ω pp .

3.2. Attitude Error Dynamics. In the presence of gyro and accelerometer biases, b g and

b a , the “virtual platform” tilt error θ appears. This error is small due to Assumption A, so we

5
 ⌣
are able to represent it by a vector and express the direction cosine matrix variation as δ C = θ pp C .

By varying Equation (1) and substituting δ ωbb = b g and δ ω pp = ω pp , we can get

θɺ pp = Cb g − ω pp (4)
Equation (4) has a clear physical meaning. The rate of change of the attitude error vector is
determined by two opposite factors: the gyro biases (projected onto the “virtual platform”) and
the control angular rate. However, this equation is not convenient for the analysis of strapdown
AHRS performance, since its terms are not constant during the vehicle turns. Instead, they are
modulated by the C matrix, even if the sensor biases, b g and b a , are constant by themselves.

To avoid this problem, Equation (4) can be transformed to the body frame:
⌣
θɺ bb + ωbb θb = b g − ωbp (5)

It is the last term ωbp = CT ω pp that will be used for the estimation of inertial sensor biases. The

relation between ωbp and b g is already given by Equation (5). To establish a similar relation

between ωbp and b a , we vary Equation (2) with δ fb = b a :

⌣
δ f p = θ pp f p + Cb a (6)

Then we substitute Equation (6) into Equation (3):

ω pp = k p θ pp f p + k p Cb a = ( k Tp f p ) θ p − ( k Tp θ p ) f p + k p Cb a
⌣ ⌣ ⌣ ⌣
(7)

The first term in the right-hand side of Equation (7) is proportional to the attitude error θ we
wish to mitigate. It provides the desired error feedback that justifies our choice of the control law
(Equation (3)). According to Assumption B, vertical accelerations are small, so f D = − g and

k Tpf p = kg . The second term is an additional error that appears when the vectors k and θ are not

orthogonal. Due to Assumption C, there is no heading error and only attitude errors are present.
Then, θ lies in the level plane, while k is always vertical by its definition, so the whole term
vanishes. The third term reflects the influence of accelerometer biases on the attitude correction
accuracy. Though generally harmful, this term allows for the estimation of accelerometer biases
by means of the ωbp signal. As stated in Assumption B, roll and pitch angles are small, so we can

freely replace k b by k p and treat this vector as constant in any vehicle manoeuvres.

After accepting these simplifications and transforming Equation (7) to the body frame,
we finally get
⌣
ωbp = kg θb + k p b a (8)

6
Equations (5) and (8) completely determine the attitude error dynamics and relate it to the sensor
biases and to the “virtual platform” control angular rate.
3.3. Control Rate Dynamics. The attitude error by itself is neither measurable nor
important for estimation. From our control law (Equation (3)) we know that, once sensor biases
are estimated and compensated, the attitude error tends to zero. So it is expedient to eliminate
this quantity from the final equations. First, we differentiate Equation (8), provided that b a is

ɺ bp = kg θɺ bb . Second, we substitute Equation (8) and its derivative into Equation

constant, and get ω

(5):
⌣ ⌣ ⌣
ɺ bp = − ( ωbb + kgI ) ωbp + kgb g + ωbbk p b a
ω (9)

The vector triple product in the last term of Equation (9) can be significantly simplified if we
⌣ ⌣
utilise the Assumption B and set ωbb = [0, 0, ω zb ]T . Then, ωbb k p b a = kω zb b a , so the product is

collinear with b a . Further, we recall the definition of the attitude correction time constant

τ = 1/( kg ) and rewrite Equation (9) in the form

⌣
ɺ bp = − (τ ωbb + I ) ωbp + b g + ω zb b a / g
τω (10)

The eigenvalues of the dynamics matrix − (τ ωbb + I ) are −1 and −1 ± iτω zb . Therefore, the
⌣

solution of Equation (10) is always stable.

This is exactly what we desired to obtain. Equation (10) describes a linearized coupling
between sensor biases and control angular rate applied to the “virtual platform”. We will use it to
justify the bias observer structure.
3.4. Bias Estimate Dynamics. The individual observers for gyro and accelerometer biases
will be both driven by the control angular rate ωbp multiplied by some scalar gains. The choice of

these gains should respect the observability conditions imposed by the nature of the system
under study. In the Introduction we noticed that accelerometer biases are completely
unobservable in a straight motion. This conclusion is confirmed by Equation (10). As far as
ω zb = 0 , the control angular rate ωbp is by no means affected by accelerometer biases. Therefore,

we will set the accelerometer bias observer gain proportional to the vehicle angular rate ω zb .
Our observer equations finally take the form:
ɺ
bˆ g = ωbp / τ g (11)

ɺ
bˆ a = gω zb ωbp / ω a (12)

7
Here, τ g can be called the gyro bias observer time constant, and ω a , by analogy, the

accelerometer bias observer “rate constant”. These quantities play a role of adjustable parameters
of the observers. They determine the settling time and the noise level of the obtained estimates.
At this stage, having derived the general observer equations, we can construct the
estimation block diagram (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Bias Observer Block Diagram.

As seen from Equation (3), the bias observer requires the derivative of the measured
velocity v GNSS
n . It is generally admitted that numerical differentiation, when applied to real-world
signals, results in large noise levels. Nevertheless, GNSS receivers are capable of providing quite
smooth velocity measurements based on carrier phase raw data, even if the receiver position is
updated using much noisier pseudorange information (Farrell and Barth, 1999). Since the
observer does not rely on position measurements, its accuracy is enough for our particular
purposes (Section 4).
3.5. Stability. When the current bias estimates are fed back to the input of the attitude
observer, as shown in Figure 1, the residual sensor biases affecting the attitude accuracy are
expressed as b g = b g (0) − bˆ g and b a = b a (0) − bˆ a . The complete linearized closed-loop

dynamics of these biases is determined by Equations (10) – (12) and admits the trivial zero
solution. To prove its stability, we can construct a positive-definite candidate Lyapunov function:

8
 τ b 2 τg 2 ω 2
V= ω p + b g + a2 b a (13)
2 2 2g
Its time derivative according to dynamics equations is
⌣
Vɺ = −ωbpT (τ ωbb + I ) ωbp (14)

This quadratic form is negative-definite due to the specific properties of the matrix − (τ ωbb + I )
⌣

pointed out in Section 3.3. Therefore, V approaches its minimum value at the origin as long as
f p ≠ f nGNSS , and the trivial solution of Equations (10) – (12) is stable.

3.6. Steady-State Operation. Suppose that the vehicle is moving straight. The open-loop
solution ωbp of Equation (10) will eventually converge to its steady value such that ω
ɺ bp = 0 .

Equation (10) will then take the simplest possible form

b g = ωbp (15)
This result is in agreement with what was said in Section 2.2. The control angular rate merely
compensates the gyro bias and can be directly used to estimate it.
Now suppose that the gyro bias has already been estimated and compensated, and the
vehicle is turning at some constant angular rate ω zb . Then from the steady-state solution of
Equation (10) we get:
1/ ω zb −τ 0
g  0 ωbp
ba =
ω zb
(τ ωb + I ) ω p = g  τ 1/ ω zb
⌣b b
(16)
 0 0 0 

Unfortunately, Equation (16), first obtained in our previous paper (Tereshkov, 2013) without
considering the general observer Equations (10) – (12), is of very limited engineering importance.
Indeed, the steady-state conditions are satisfied only when the vehicle angular rate ω zb is
maintained constant for a time interval three to five times longer than the attitude correction time
constant τ . Typical turns performed by land vehicles are significantly shorter, so the application
of Equation (16) is not justified by practice. The general observer seems to be preferable over its
elegant but unreliable steady-state solutions.

4. EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION. The bias observer discussed in Section 3.4 was

implemented in the special experimental firmware of a Topcon AGI-4 GNSS/IMU integrated
receiver. The receiver was installed on the cabin roof of a MacDon 9300 self-propelled
windrower (Figure 2). The windrower was driven along a curved path (Figure 3) so that the
observability of both gyro and accelerometer biases was achieved.

9
Figure 2. MacDon 9300 Self-Propelled Windrower with Topcon AGI-4 GNSS/IMU Receiver.

Figure 3. Test Path.

10
 To assess the observer accuracy, test run data were post-processed in two stages. At the
first stage, the actual gyro and accelerometer biases for the longitudinal and lateral axes were
estimated by the proposed observer and then compensated. Bias values were found to be
bgx = −0.08 deg/s , bgy = −0.13 deg/s , bax = −0.11 m/s 2 , bay = 0.00 m/s 2 , which is typical for the

consumer-grade MEMS sensors installed in the AGI-4 receiver. Nevertheless, these values by
themselves cannot give any information regarding the bias observer performance. Since any
other in-run bias estimation methods could have their own performance issues, none of them
could serve as a reliable reference. For that reason, the second data processing stage was needed:
the precisely known artificial biases were added to the sensor measurements, and the estimation
procedure was repeated. The resulting bias estimates are shown in Figures 4 and 5.
Data post-processing was performed with the following observer parameter values:
τ = 4 s , τ g = 40 s , ω a = 45 deg/s . The values were selected manually, but, in contrast to Kalman

filter tuning, this was a straightforward task, as the bias observer performance is completely
determined by these three constants with a rather clear and natural meaning (Section 3.4).

Figure 4. True and Estimated Gyro Biases.

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 Figure 5. True and Estimated Accelerometer Biases.

After the initial convergence is complete, the residual estimate variations are of the order
of bɶg = 0.01 deg/s and bɶa = 0.01 m/s 2 , which can be attributed partly to observer imperfections

and partly to the actual uncompensated in-run bias instabilities correctly tracked by the observer.
Consider the worst case when the estimate variations are solely due to observer errors. Let the
vertical displacement of the GNSS/IMU integrated receiver from the vehicle “reference point”
be h = 3 m , as in the example discussed in the Introduction. Then, the “reference point”

positioning errors caused by the wrong attitude determination are hbɶgτ = 2 mm and

hbɶa / g = 3 mm respectively. It is by one order of magnitude less than the GNSS receiver
positioning errors even in the RTK mode.
The bias observer proved to be quite robust against parameter variations: a 20 % change
in any of the three adjustable constants leads to bias estimate deviations smaller than 0.001 deg/s

and 0.01 m/s 2 .

5. CONCLUSIONS. Motivated by the excessive implementation complexity of the traditional

Kalman filter and inspired by the geometric observer theory, we sought for a simple observer
that could estimate gyro and accelerometer biases of a MEMS-based GNSS/IMU integrated land
navigation system. Our primary aim was to express the desired bias estimates exclusively in

12
terms of scalars and vectors in the conventional three-dimensional Euclidean space, thus
avoiding any multidimensional vector-matrix operations.
The designed bias observer (Figure 1) was successfully tested on a self-propelled
windrower (Figures 4 and 5). The achieved estimation accuracy proved to be sufficient for all
precision agriculture tasks.
It is still unclear whether the proposed observer can be generalised to applications other
than land vehicle navigation, since the typical dynamics of aerial or underwater vehicles violates
the Assumptions B and C made when deriving the observer equations. A complete geometrical
treatment of the bias estimation problem is a subject of future work.

FINANCIAL SUPPORT. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency,
commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST. None.

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