INTEGRATED MOTION MEASUREMENT OF MULTIBODY SYSTEMS AND FLEXIBLE VEHICLE STRUCTURES

Integrated navigation systems based on inertial sensors and GPS are well-established devices for vehicle guidance. The system design is traditionally based on the assumption that the vehicle is a rigid body. However, generalizing such integrated systems to rigid multibody or even more to flexible structures is possible. It is based on distributed sensors and provides an interesting basis for motion control and system identification. The kernel of the integrated system consists of an observer that estimates the motion state of the mechanical structure. The paper presents the multibody and the flexible structure approach as well as first motion estimation results.