Inertial measurement unitAn inertial measurement unit (IMU) is an electronic device that measures and reports a body's specific force, angular rate, and sometimes the orientation of the body, using a combination of accelerometers, gyroscopes, and sometimes magnetometers. When the magnetometer is included, IMUs are referred to as IMMUs. IMUs are typically used to maneuver modern vehicles including motorcycles, missiles, aircraft (an attitude and heading reference system), including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), among many others, and spacecraft, including satellites and landers.
Inertial navigation systemAn inertial navigation system (INS) is a navigation device that uses motion sensors (accelerometers), rotation sensors (gyroscopes) and a computer to continuously calculate by dead reckoning the position, the orientation, and the velocity (direction and speed of movement) of a moving object without the need for external references. Often the inertial sensors are supplemented by a barometric altimeter and sometimes by magnetic sensors (magnetometers) and/or speed measuring devices.
ElectronicsElectronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other charged particles. Electronics is a subfield of electrical engineering, but it differs from it in that it focuses on using active devices such as transistors, diodes, and integrated circuits to control and amplify the flow of electric current and to convert it from one form to another, such as from alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC) or from analog to digital.
Digital electronicsDigital electronics is a field of electronics involving the study of digital signals and the engineering of devices that use or produce them. This is in contrast to analog electronics and analog signals. Digital electronic circuits are usually made from large assemblies of logic gates, often packaged in integrated circuits. Complex devices may have simple electronic representations of Boolean logic functions. The binary number system was refined by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (published in 1705) and he also established that by using the binary system, the principles of arithmetic and logic could be joined.
Analogue electronicsAnalogue electronics (analog electronics) are electronic systems with a continuously variable signal, in contrast to digital electronics where signals usually take only two levels. The term "analogue" describes the proportional relationship between a signal and a voltage or current that represents the signal. The word analogue is derived from the word ανάλογος n(analogos) meaning "proportional". Analogue signal An analogue signal uses some attribute of the medium to convey the signal's information.
Optical flowOptical flow or optic flow is the pattern of apparent motion of objects, surfaces, and edges in a visual scene caused by the relative motion between an observer and a scene. Optical flow can also be defined as the distribution of apparent velocities of movement of brightness pattern in an image. The concept of optical flow was introduced by the American psychologist James J. Gibson in the 1940s to describe the visual stimulus provided to animals moving through the world.
Inertial frame of referenceIn classical physics and special relativity, an inertial frame of reference (also called inertial space, or Galilean reference frame) is a frame of reference not undergoing any acceleration. It is a frame in which an isolated physical object—an object with zero net force acting on it—is perceived to move with a constant velocity or, equivalently, it is a frame of reference in which Newton's first law of motion holds.
Attitude and heading reference systemAn attitude and heading reference system (AHRS) consists of sensors on three axes that provide attitude information for aircraft, including roll, pitch, and yaw. These are sometimes referred to as MARG (Magnetic, Angular Rate, and Gravity) sensors and consist of either solid-state or microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) gyroscopes, accelerometers and magnetometers. They are designed to replace traditional mechanical gyroscopic flight instruments.
Motion estimationMotion estimation is the process of determining motion vectors that describe the transformation from one 2D image to another; usually from adjacent frames in a video sequence. It is an ill-posed problem as the motion is in three dimensions but the images are a projection of the 3D scene onto a 2D plane. The motion vectors may relate to the whole image (global motion estimation) or specific parts, such as rectangular blocks, arbitrary shaped patches or even per pixel.
Power electronicsPower electronics is the application of electronics to the control and conversion of electric power. The first high-power electronic devices were made using mercury-arc valves. In modern systems, the conversion is performed with semiconductor switching devices such as diodes, thyristors, and power transistors such as the power MOSFET and IGBT. In contrast to electronic systems concerned with the transmission and processing of signals and data, substantial amounts of electrical energy are processed in power electronics.
