Of Gyroscopes And Accelerometers

These days I have nothing much to do about my project, since I have ordered parts and waiting for them to arrive. I have always hated waiting, I m an impatient and impulsive person tending to have more than one obsessive compulsive disorders. But thats not what the post is about, so my current objective is to make a remote unit which can be used to determine the relative position of the user.

Now relative position may mean a lot of things and therefore in this context it means the current position with respect to the previous position. Now what I have decided is to do this use inertial sensors.

What are inertial sensors? They are sensors used to measure the change in inertia applied to the sensor, in lay man’s terms, if you apply a force and the object STARTS or stops to move, these sensors would give a corresponding voltage value. Now this is also not for the complete lay man (Read ouff) but I dont know any way simpler to explain this.

Ok, anyone who’s worked on this stuff would say big deal, This is old old technology and people have been using IMU (inertial Measurement Units) and INS (Inertial Navigation Systems) for a while now so whats new here. Well to tell the truth, nothing is really new here… Hell some people have also used this for smaller applications too like for determining orientation of an object. So there is nothing new to this… So why am I doing this and why the heck am I writing about it? Well I m thinking up a way to do this just by employing accelerometers! I bet this can be done, I m still working out the theoretical details. Now why would I use only accelerometers and not Gyros.

For that let me first explain what are Gyros and What are accelerometers. So the latter first, accelerometers are devices used to calculate translational acceleration, translational means moving from one point to another in a straight line. Now Gyros are more fun, they are used to measure rotational velocities, Now using the two together is usually the method used by everyone. But Gyros are expensive and difficult to get measurements from, plus you need to implement more household circuitry to maintain an output from them. While accelerometer are much more easier to do. So my motivation is simple. To make it easier for myself. But the more I come to think about it the more discouraged I get about this idea. Cuz the maths involved is way out there.

People, Any bright ideas? Please help!!!