2008 10th Intl. Conf.
on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision
Hanoi, Vietnam, 17–20 December 2008
Error Analysis in Strapdown INS for Aircraft
Assembly Lines
Fabio Gómez-Estern and Francisco Gordillo
Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering
University of Sevilla
Sevilla, Spain
fabio@esi.us.es, gordillo@esi.us.es
Abstract—This work proposes a methodology for assessing the
use of commercial Inertial Measurement Units in manual part
alignment operations with high precision requirements, found in
aircraft assembly lines. The underlying application is a situation
where two separate parts must be mounted at different locations
within a facility, guaranteeing a precise angular alignment be-
tween them. If, for construction reasons, there is no direct sight
between both elements, optical methods must be ruled out and the
problem can be tackled by means of inclinometers. However, their
precision are often limited compared to standard requirements in
aeronautics applications. In this paper we propose a method based
on two inertial navigation systems, and provide the tools necessary
for determining the precision requirements for the gyroscopes and
IMUs involved, based on error dynamics analysis and simulation.
Index Terms—Inertial Navigation Systems (INS), Boresighting,
Inertial Measurement Units, Gyroscopes, Instrumentation.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Boresight systems are commonplace in aeronautics. It is
a natural requirement to ensure angular alignment within
small error bounds (below 1 mrad) between parts that are
mounted at different points of the facility. This is a frequent
requirement in sensors like radar, lasers, transponders, etc.
which may exchange angular data among them and with a
set of actuators, e.g. autopilots, directive antennas, missile and
satellite launching elements, etc.
The problem can be addressed in different ways. Orientation
estimation methods used in mobile robotics [3] are worth
revisiting, but the standard precision requirements fail to
match the present application. The most effective technique for
higher accuracy is probably optical alignment, where small–
aperture optical or laser beams departing from the to–be–
aligned devices, are expected to meet at specific points when
alignment is perfectly accomplished. Commonly, a collimator
is used. However, the main restriction for this application is
the necessity of a line of sight shared between both devices.
The complexity in the mounting sequence in aircraft assembly
lines, sometimes makes it impossible to guarantee this.
Then, if alignment must be assessed and optical methods are
not feasible, inclinometers are a good approach when precision
is no great deal. Needless to say, inclinometers deliver poor
precision and dynamical unwanted effects, as they depend
on the gravity field. What is more inconvenient is that they
can be used for roll and yaw measurements, but heading
must be computed otherwise, most often via imprecise and
978-1-4244-2287-6/08/$25.00 
c 2008 IEEE
Authorized licensed use limited to: STAATS U UNIBIBL BREMEN. Downloaded on June 16,2010 at 22:41:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
interference–prone measurements of the earth’s magnetic field.
These low precision absolute sensors are better fitted for long
term drift compensation (see [5], [1]).
An alternative to these classic methods makes use of recent
advances in inertial navigation systems (INS) technology.
These systems have long been used as an aid in applications
such as autonomous vehicle control, autopilots and missile
guidance, but very seldom, though very effectively in some
cases, in assembly operations [4].
Inertial navigation systems can be divided in two groups:
Gyro–stabilized and Strapdown (see [6] for a detailed com-
parison). The former achieve great precision by inertial sta-
bilization of a mechanical disc within a rotating gimbal. The
orientation of the rotating frame with respect to the stabilized
platform is a measure of the net rotation of the system with
respect to its initial position. However, this device requires
powered and articulated mechanical devices, which may result
inconvenient for manual assembly operations.
The alternative, Strapdown Inertial Navigation Systems [9],
appears as a result of the evolution of microprocessors and
requires no mechanical motion. Instead, the principle of oper-
ation is the high–rate discrete integration of angular rotation
measurements, generally obtained by a laser or an optical fiber
gyro. These setups require less space and power, and can thus
be handled easily by manual assembly line personnel.
The main arguments for strapdown are ease of handling,
compactness and robustness, as it relies on electronics. But
precision is the main goal, and the error budget must be care-
fully analyzed. Precision analysis in strapdown systems based
on gyro measures, when used for manual assembly operations
is somewhat difficult, as errors stem from both human motion
and instrument specifications and their effects interact. Euler
angle or quaternion integration is a nonlinear operation and
error dynamics are complex and non–autonomous. Moreover,
inertial measurement devices manufacturers readily provide in-
stantaneous instrument specification such as axis misalignment
and white noise power. But on a long mounting operation, the
accumulated effect of these is hard to estimate analytically.
Significant experimental studies have been reported, such as
[2], but the requirement an actual gyroscope is less compelling
at decision–making stages.
In this paper we devise a methodology for numerical
analysis of aircraft boresighting systems based on strapdown
184 ICARCV 2008
INS. First, sources of error are properly classified based on
commercial datasheets. A mathematical model is developed for
the measuring device and errors. Then, typical human motion
is analyzed, for a specific handling and assembly operation,
and its spectral components are identified. Using this data, a
numerical simulation platform based on Matlab/Simulink has
been developed. The tool performs several analysis each with a
unique independent source of error in other to guide the project
engineer in the key aspects of choosing the correct device.
Finally, a global variance test is performed, with lumped effect
of all sources of errors.
The developed application is computation and memory
intensive, thus optimization of the code has been necessary.
The practical benefits of this work are two–fold. First, the
method proved to be effective in successfully designing a real–
world aircraft mounting application, and allowed the aeronautic
engineers to arguably discard some commercial devices that
were initially taken into consideration. Secondly, an analysis
of the numerical integration methods led to the conclusion that
errors can be significantly reduced if raw gyroscope data is
interpolated to provide samples at a higher rate. This is due
to the fact that integration is nonlinear, and as such, even if
no change in external signals occurs, there is a intrinsic error
proportional to the integration period.
mds
September 1, 2008
II. OVERVIEW OF THE ASSEMBLY OPERATION
In this section we briefly describe the main features of the
assembly scenario inspired by [4]. We encounter a manual
mounting of two elements: one outside the aircraft, called the
reference unit, or RU, and a second one inside the cabin, named
the mobile unit (MU). The RU is first installed outside the
cabin on one of the wings. The MU must then be installed in
the cockpit at a frame that should be rotated angles (θ, φ, ψ)
with respect to the RU. The proposed architecture is illustrated
in Figure 1.
Inside Unit: MU
Mobile (Cockpit)
Trajectory
Outside Unit: RU
Fixed Reference
Fig. 1. Application framework.
185
Authorized licensed use limited to: STAATS U UNIBIBL BREMEN. Downloaded on June 16,2010 at 22:41:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
A. Proposed architecture
The main idea behind the assembly procedure is to attach
an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) to each of the parts, PMU
and RMU. The reason for this lies in the fact that the duration
of the assembly operation is sufficient for the earth rotation as
well as small aircraft movements to affect the measure. But if
these movements are registered both at the RU and the MU,
they can be cancelled in the post–experiment computations and
isolate the relative rotation angles. Obviously, as will be seen
below, these operations are nonlinear, that is, they are not mere
substractions, due to the nature of the rotation spaces.
For the manual operation, the following procedure is pre-
scribed:
1) Proceed mounting the RU at is final position.
2) Without moving the RU align both pieces right at the RU
site, using a mechanic structure with known tolerances.
3) Start IMUs data logging.
4) Unlock MU, move to final destination (manual handling)
and lock it. This operation must be bounded in time, and
angular velocity.
5) Stop data logging at both IMUs and compute net me-
chanical rotation.
B. Precision requirements
The practical application on which the proposed method
requires the knowledge of the final rotation with an error less
than 0.160 mrad, statistic interval 1σ. This precision is added
to external mechanical tolerances to account for the overall
error budget. However, we are exclusively interested in the
0.160 mrad term.
III. E RROR DYNAMICS
No matter how accurate are angular velocity measures, ω(t),
the process of obtaining the accumulated rotation is a nonlinear
computation discretized within a microprocessor, and hence it
is error prone. Moreover, integration errors are unbounded in
time, thought they are bounded for finite time intervals. On top
of this, angular velocity itself is obviously obtained with errors,
as white noise, scale factors and axis misalignment affect the
measure. Finally, sensor bandwidth limits the rate of change in
ω(t) that can be captured. But being this a manual assembly
operation, rotation speeds and accelerations are determined by
human motion, and this must be carefully characterized in
order to properly introduce it in the error model.
A. Noisy sensor model
Error sources in gyroscopes have been widely described in
[6] and [9], see also [7] for proper definitions. Standard gyro
specifications are illustrated in table I. All these are defined
either as upper bounds or as statistical parameters, related to
probability density functions (PDF). When the latter are not
explicitly indicated, normal distributions are assumed.
All these elements can be easily modelled and introduced
into the dynamical equations, except average random walk
(ARW). The difficulty with ARW is that is a statistical
 Source Type Typical value (units) Identifiable Cancellable Device type
White noise PDF Expressed as ARW (below) No No All
Sensor bias PDF 0.005 deg/hr Yes No (may vary) All
Average random walk (ARW) PDF 0.002 deg/sqrt(hr) No No All
Misalignment Upper bound 4 arcsec Yes Yes All
Scale factor Upper bound 5ppm Yes Yes All
Acceleration related Fixed model Yes Yes Yes1 Mechanical gyros
Bandwidth Fixed model 100Hz Yes No All
TABLE I
G YROSCOPE ERROR SOURCES

specification of the accumulated error observed at a hypo- velocity vector and ωm the measured quantity,
thetical integrator connected to the gyro output. Being this
ωm (t) = α1 α2 ω1 (t) + α3 a(t) + n(t) + nr (t)
error an effect observed along time extended experiments (not
instantaneous measures), it cannot be introduced directly in ω1 (jω) = G(jω)ω0 (jω)
the instantaneous differential equations. Moreover, this output B. Model of the integration algorithms
is affected by any independent source of error from table I,
The attitude of an inertial navigation system is computed
hence, strictly speaking, it cannot be isolated and added as an
along time from the integration of the sensed angular velocity
independent term to the existing ones.
by means of a choice of discrete nonlinear integration algo-
Our assumption in ARW modelling is a worst–case si–
rithms called coning algorithms.
tuation where it is caused by different phenomena than the rest
Simulation tests indicated that the results obtained from
in table I, hence producing an additional term in the differential
different choices of the coning algorithm do not differ signif-
equations. In order to introduce this effect into an instantaneous
icantly. In our application, we chose the axis–angle notation,
equation an additional white noise model with be associated to
because it is probably the most widely used and it can be
it. Considering a zero–mean, σ–standard deviation white noise
easily simplified by identifying small highly nonlinear terms
signal nr (t) integrated along time, the ARW becomes [8]
(see [9]).
k
 In axis–angle notation, the orientation between two ref-
wr (k) = nr (i) erence frames is described by means of a vector σ whose
i=0 direction and magnitude represent the axis and the angle of
which happens to be a non–stationary process whose standard a single turn that must be performed on the first system to
deviation evolves with time as obtain the orientation of the second. The vector differential
⎡ ⎛ k ⎞⎤
k equation that relates σ and ω is
 
σw2
(t) = E ⎣ nr (i) ⎝ nr (j)⎠⎦ 
i=0 j=0 1 1 σ sin(σ)
⎡ ⎤ σ̇ = ω + σ ×ω + 1− } σ ×(σ ×ω)
k 
k 2 σ2 2(1 − cos(σ))
 (1)
= E⎣ nr (i)nr (j)⎦
This equation is intrinsically nonlinear as the reference
i=0 j=0
frame in which the angular rate ω is expressed varies with time.
k 
 k
The actual computation takes place in a digital microprocessor
= E [nr (i)nr (j)] δij
and it must be discretized with time. The discrete integration
i=0 j=0
can be performed using different integration methods. The re-
k
 sulting error budget depends on this choice. In our application,
= E[nr (i)2 ] = σ 2 k
the Runge–Kutta algorithm was used.
i=0

assuming no correlation between subsequent samples of nr (k)
2
. As a consequence, ωr (t) is translated into a white noise
whose of zero mean and standard deviation proportional to
the square root of the elapsed time. Sensor specification is
expressed in degrees per square root of hour; this is scaled
into degrees per square roots of seconds, and taken as the
standard deviation of the equivalent white noise.
The instantaneous sensor model is a three–dimensional
vector equation obtained defining ω0 as the actual angular
C. Integration periods and interpolation
The process of discretization in coning algorithms on the
overall error has two side–effects
• The coning differential equation (1) is non autonomous
due to ω. The latter is a continuous–time signal, and its
discretization implies a loss of information. This implies
that the integration algorithm should work at least at the
ω–sampling rate.
• Even if (1) were autonomous, the nonlinear terms vary

2 This assumption happens to be the worst–case scenario when translating

continuously throughout the integration interval. Hence,
ARW into instantaneous white noise, as non–zero self–correlation would even if no external change is produced, integration can
require lower σr for the same level of σr . still be improved by reducing the period.

186

Authorized licensed use limited to: STAATS U UNIBIBL BREMEN. Downloaded on June 16,2010 at 22:41:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Our proposal is to reduce the integration period two orders of IV. N UMERICAL ANALYSIS
magnitude below the ω–sampling rate. In search for improved In this section we will describe the implementation of the
results, we have also interpolated the external signal ω using simulation tool devised for the proposed project.
splines, to obtain samples of ω(t) at the integration rate.
This resulted, as will be illustrated in the final sections, in A. Simulation strategy
a significant improvement of the algorithm.
The overall computation comprises several steps. As prior
calculations, we must build Matlab time vectors out of the
D. Human motion modelling
analytical trajectories of the Euler angles and their derivatives
Human motion in assembly operation is random and some- obtained from empirical human motion data as series of sinus
times includes high frequency components that result in poor functions. Combining them, the time sequence of angular rates,
integration results. Our work focuses on a particular assembly is also calculated. Using sinus series expansion, no numerical
operation with the following features: derivative is needed in the process.
• Length of operation: 15 min. The simulator, implemented in Matlab/Simulink consists of
• Type of operation: handling and inserting 2Kg body into several components
a frame. 1) A Matlab script to prepare the data for process. Coherent
• Special motions: stairs must be climbed once to access human motion trajectories and angular velocities are
the aircraft cockpit. generated according to the previous statements.
• Restrictions: 2) A Matlab script to generate noise signals and distur-
1) The angular velocity at which the operation is done bances.
must be kept below a specific value β1 at all times. 3) An algorithm performing batch simulations with differ-
2) The percentage of time in which angular velocities ent random seeds.
are above a specified value β2 should be below a 4) A mechanism to iteratively isolate specific disturbance
certain value ρ2 . sources in simulations.
3) The pitch angle should be kept below π/2 to avoid 5) The Simulink project, described below.
singularities in Euler angle computation. 6) A Matlab script designed to evaluate the error budget at
4) The total number of turns around the yaw axis the end of the simulation.
should be below 1. This can be computed as long
as the last condition is satisfied. B. Simulink block diagram
In our application, all these values are monitored electronically. The trajectories simulator has the following blocks
Alarms are fired when some of these are not fulfilled, and the 1) Gyroscope kinematics (affecting bandwidth).
manoeuver must be restarted. 2) Sources of additive errors.
Once the typical human motion associated to the operation 3) Error compensation elements.
has been characterized, a simulated operation is performed by 4) Interpolation of ω–samples and numerical integration
a person carrying a IMU logging inertial data.
The data is then analyzed and their spectral components Offline Preprocess
computed, see Figure 2. Motion Spectral Postprocess
Data
Simulation Loop
Human motion analysis Inverse Rotation
140 Transform Euler angles Matrices
Discrete Integration
Trajectory Error Relative
120 Generation sources Orientation
Interpolation
E.A.
Kinematic Error
100 Preprocessing Gyro
assesment
Angular dynamics
Rate
Amplitude

80

Fig. 3. Structure of the simulator.

60

40
C. Implementation issues
20 The described operation is computation and memory inten-
sive. Trajectories and its analytically computed derivatives are
0
10
−2
10
−1
10
0 1
10
2
10
obtained for a 15 min operation prior to launching the simu-
Frequency (Hz) lation. For a 100Hz digital output gyro (which is a frequent
quantity), this results in 54000 data samples if three Euler
Fig. 2. Spectral analysis of human motion data. angles and three angular velocity components are accounted
for.

187

Authorized licensed use limited to: STAATS U UNIBIBL BREMEN. Downloaded on June 16,2010 at 22:41:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 This amount is manageable in nowadays desktop computers,
but a problem arises when angular velocity data is interpolated
at a higher rate for improving the integration algorithm. A
convenient interpolation rate has been experimentally set at
two orders of magnitude above the instrument sampling rate.
Further than this no significant change in errors has been
detected. This means that solely the angular velocity vector for
the specified time span would require 27M samples, which, at
double precision, sums up to 216 Mbytes of data.
In order to reduce this quantity, we propose interpolate the
ω–trajectory by chunks, created as the integration requires
them and discarding them from memory once they have
been processed. By doing so, the simulation environment
will more closely mimic the final embedded application for
which the analysis is being performed. The integration process
intermingles with the interpolation and memory management
one, resulting in the algorithm depicted in figure 3.
D. Causality
Another important issue with interpolation is that optimality
comes at the price of causality. After numerous simulations,
we have observed that interpolation between samples is best
accomplished when the set of raw data samples used by the
integration algorithm at a specific time, include some obtained
in a future time. This seems to violate causality, but only
virtually. As a matter of fact, a real time embedded application
may delay the integrator a fixed amount of time with respect to
the actual data capture process and still provide exact relative
rotation: it will be guaranteed as long as the delay is identical
in both RU and MU.
E. Final error computation
Now if no errors were introduced by the integrator, C and
Cint would be equal. The discrepancy between them can be
expressed again as a rotation: the relative angles between the
computed attitude of the MU (where the unit “thinks” it is)
and its exact final attitude (the one provided by the simulator).
The cosine matrix corresponding to this virtual rotation is
Cerror = Cint · C T
and we obtain the angular error deriving the corresponding
Euler angles of Cerror. In the simulation, as we have assumed
CRUf = I3 (identity matrix), we simply compute the error on
each axis as
Euler angles of Cint · CM UfT .
V. R ESULTS
Simulation tests have been performed, with partial and
lumped error sources. The first batch of tests has been per-
formed with isolated error sources in order to identify the
critical error causes and guide the project engineers into proper
gyroscope selection, being the gyro axis misalignment and
discrete integration the most influential. The latter effect sig-
nificantly improved with interpolating angular rate samples at
10kHz. The set of gyroscope parameters used in the simulation
are those indicated in table II.
In Figure 4 the lumped error simulation results are depicted,
along the 15 min assembly operation. The vertical axis indi-
cates the orientation error after the integration in radians, one
plot for every coordinate axis.
1
x 10
−4 Accumulated errors

The final error estimation is obtained via an algorithm based 0.8

on cosine transformation matrices. In order to exactly estimate
0.6
the deviation between the numerical integrator and the physical
trajectories, some notation will be introduced. 0.4

First note that the orientation of a reference system SRA 0.2

Error (rad)

with respect to a different system SRB can be described by 0

a cosine orthogonal matrix CAB such that
−0.2
rB = CAB · rA −0.4

where rA and rB are the coordinates of the same vector −0.6

projected, respectively, onto axes SRA and SRB. CAB is the −0.8
rotation matrix easily computed from the Euler angles provided
−1
by the integrator, using well–known formulas. 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
Time (s)
Under these criteria, we define the rotation matrices in Table
II, all referred to an inertial frame with the orientation of the
RU when both units were aligned together at the beginning of Fig. 4. Lumped error simulation results.
the assembly operation.
Initial alignment and resetting the integrators at the begin- A. Total error
ning of the operation imply that at the end, the net rotation of
MU with respect to RU is described by the matrix product In the real application, both units RU and MU will provide,
at the end of the assembly operation, their computed final
C = CM Uf · CRUfT orientation. The final relative orientation between them is
However, in the absence of absolute measures of the attitude, computed as follows (the suffix ‘int’ is dropped here, as in
this rotation is computed from the coning algorithm as the real application only integrated measures are available)
Cint = CM U intf · CRU intTf Crelative = CM U f · CRU T

188

Authorized licensed use limited to: STAATS U UNIBIBL BREMEN. Downloaded on June 16,2010 at 22:41:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 Matrix Meaning in real application Value in simulator
CRUf Rotation matrix of the RU reference system at the end of the This matrix is neglected (assumed the identity) in our sim-
operation, with respect to its initial position. If the aircraft ulator, as the earth rotation has such a low frequency and
remains steady this matrix differs from the identity because amplitude that hardly contributes to the overall error, when
of the earth’s rotation. properly cancelled between RU and MU.
CRU intf Rotation matrix computed by the RU integrator at the end Identity matrix.
of the operation. Differs from CRUf due to integrator and
gyroscope errors, assumed small because of the slow motion
of the RU (earth rotation).
CM U intf Rotation matrix computed by the MU integrator at the end The result of the simulated integration algorithm.
of the operation. Differs from CM Uf due to integrator and
gyroscope errors.
TABLE II
M ATRICES INVOLVED IN FINAL CALCULATION

Both units will introduce errors, and for small values, these Component % below maximum
might be considered additive, according to the linear decom- x 100%
position y 99.9944%
z 99.9956%
CM U f · CRU T = (I + ΔCM U f )(I + ΔCRU f ) VI. C ONCLUSIONS
≈ I + ΔCM U f + ΔCRU f A method for error analysis in strapdown INS has been
presented. A real aeronautical assembly application motivated
assuming small ΔCM U f and ΔCRU f , corresponding to the analysis. The method is based on modelling and simulation
small errors. of the 0error sources in gyroscopic systems including error
due to numerical integration of angular movements. Human
Hence, a worst case scenario is considered where the terms
motion has also been modelled. As a result of this analysis,
in the addition contribute in the same sense to the net value.
improvements in the numerical integration have been proposed,
The computed addition of error from both units is illustrated in
namely, the use of lower integration period by spline interpo-
Fig. 5. This is the value that should be kept below specification
lation of the sampled data. Moreover, the resultant software
with probability 1σ (equivalent to 68% of cases assuming
tool allows us to assess the feasibility of the required precision
normal distribution).
operation for a given set of gyroscope parameters. Currently, a
real time system based on the RU -M U architecture described
x 10
−4 Error sum considering both units above has been fully developed and deployed.
2
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
1.5
The project described has been funded by EADS–CASA
and ELIMCO.
1
R EFERENCES
Error (rad)

0.5
[1] B. Barshan and H.F. Durrant-Whyte. Orientation estimate for mobile
robots using gyroscopic information. Intelligent Robots and Systems’
0 94.’Advanced Robotic Systems and the Real World’, IROS’94. Proceedings
of the IEEE/RSJ/GI International Conference on, 3, 1994.
[2] J. Borenstein. Experimental evaluation of a fiber optics gyroscope
−0.5
for improvingdead-reckoning accuracy in mobile robots. 1998 IEEE
International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 1998, 4, 1998.
−1 [3] H.R. Everett. Sensors for mobile robots : theory and applications. A K
Peters. Wellesley, Mass., 1995.
[4] J.J. Jaklitsch and V.A. Paturzo. Non line of sight boresight based on
−1.5
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 inertial measurement technology. AUTOTESTCON 2003. IEEE Systems
Time (s) Readiness Technology Conference. Proceedings, pages 527–533, 2003.
[5] Aaron J Kapaldo. Gyroscope Calibration and Dead Reckoning for an
Autonomous Underwater Vehicle. MsC Thesis, 2005.
Fig. 5. Net error with contributions from both units RU and MU. [6] A. Lawrence. Modern inertial technology: Navigation, guidance, and
control. Springer-Verlag, New York, 1998.
[7] Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. IEEE Standard 528-1984.
Finally, in order to validate the results, we have computed Inertial Sensor Terminology. 1984.
the percentage of time where each of these signals remains [8] B. Picinbono. Random Signal and Systems. Prentice–Hall, New Jersey,
1993.
below the specified bound, in our application 0.160 mrad. [9] D.H. Titterton and J.L. Weston. Strapdown inertial navigation technol-
The following table drops satisfactory results for the analyzed ogy. Ed. Peter Peregrinis Ltd. on behalf of the Institution of Electrical
gyroscope. Engineers, London, 2004.

189

Authorized licensed use limited to: STAATS U UNIBIBL BREMEN. Downloaded on June 16,2010 at 22:41:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.