Constraint-Combined Adaptive Complementary Filter for Accurate Yaw Estimation in Magnetically Disturbed Environments

One of the major issues in inertial and magnetic measurement unit (IMMU)-based 3D orientation estimation is compensation for magnetic disturbances in magnetometer signals, as the magnetic disturbance is a major cause of inaccurate yaw estimation. In the proposed approach, a kinematic constraint is used to provide a measurement equation in addition to the accelerometer and magnetometer signals to mitigate the disturbance effect on the orientation estimation. Although a Kalman filter (KF) is the most popular framework for IMMU-based orientation estimation, a complementary filter (CF) has its own advantages over KF in terms of mathematical simplicity and ease of implementation. Accordingly, this paper introduces a quaternion-based CF with a constraint-combined correction equation. Furthermore, the weight of the constraint relative to the magnetometer signal is adjusted to adapt to magnetic environments to optimally deal with the magnetic disturbance. In the results of our validation experiments, the average and maximum of yaw errors were 1.17° and 1.65° from the proposed CF, respectively, and 8.88° and 14.73° from the conventional CF, respectively, showing the superiority of the proposed approach.