A Kalman estimator using two directions of angular velocity

A Kalman filter that can estimate equal velocity and equal angular velocity by means of angular velocities in two directions is proposed. In the proposed tracking filter, the angular velocity is calculated in two directions from the difference of the two velocity vectors obtained from the observation values of the past three samples. By making use of the fact that the speed of rotation of the velocity vector coincides with the angular velocity in constant-speed circular motion, the variation of the velocity is expressed without using an acceleration term. Since the calculation of the rotating acceleration is not needed, the error due to shift of the estimated center and the estimated radius in Ref. 10 can be made zero and the tracking accuracy can be improved. The effectiveness of the proposed tracking filter is demonstrated with regard to the tracking accuracy and computational load by computer simulation. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 1, 87(10): 67–80, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecja.10160