Martin J. Ling
University of Edinburgh

Alex D. Young
University of Edinburgh

Abstract

IMUSim is a new simulation package developed in Python to model Inertial Measurement Units, i.e. devices which include accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers. It was developed in the course of our research into algorithms for IMU-based motion capture, and has now been released under the GPL for the benefit of other researchers and users. The software generates realistic sensor readings based on trajectory, environment, sensor and system models. It includes implementaions of various relevant processing algorithms and mathematical utilities, some of which may be useful elsewhere. The simulator makes extensive use of NumPy, SciPy, SimPy, Cython, Matplotlib and Mayavi. The rapid development enabled by these tools allowed the project to be completed as a side project by two researchers. Careful design of an object-oriented API for the various models involved in the simulation allows the software to remain flexible and extensible while requiring users to write a minimum amount of code to use it.

Keywords

simulation, IMU, accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer

DOI

10.25080/Majora-ebaa42b7-00b

Bibtex entry

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Copyright © 2011 Martin J. Ling et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.