A Redundant Aircraft Attitude System Based on Fuzzy Logic Data Fusion of the Miniaturized Inertial Sensors

A redundant strap-down attitude system using three miniaturized gyro sensors linear clusters in the detection unit are here presented. For each of the three clusters the inertial sensors' data are fused by using a fuzzy logic method, in order to improve the angular speed signal measured by the detection unit and delivered to the attitude algorithm. After a short introduction the data fusion algorithm and the theoretical background of the attitude system are shown in the sections two and three. In the fourth section, the software implementation and experimental validation of the redundant inertial attitude system are exposed. To perform the experimental validation of the developed redundant attitude system some data were simultaneously acquired from a three-dimensional redundant gyro sensors unit and from an integrated INS/GPS navigator; the INS/GPS system was used as reference system to perform an evaluation of the attitude angles errors. The three-dimensional redundant gyro sensors unit was built with twelve gyros disposed in three clusters of four sensors each, along the x, y and z axes of the body frame.