Remote length measurement system using a single point laser distance sensor and an inertial measurement unit

In this paper, we propose a remote measurement system consisting of a single point laser distance sensor and an IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit). The movement of the system is estimated using a strapdown inertial navigation algorithm. This movement information is combined with the distance sensor to obtain remote point position. The distance sensor is a time-of-flight range finder and can measure distances up to 40 m. Using the estimated remote point position, length between remote points is computed. Also, a plane to plane (such as wall to wall) distance is estimated. The maximum root mean square of the error (RMSE) for the length, height, and angle are 2.93 cm, 2.23 cm and 0.58°, respectively.