MSFUSION

Next Generation Motion Sensors for Hybrid GNSS/INS Solutions in high accuracy machine control applications​

Project Overview: 

The objective of MSFUSION was to prove new low-cost motion and positioning multi-sensor technologies based on the exploitation of advanced calibration and sensor fusion techniques (including those using Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning) in order to improve the overall PNT performance experienced by the user, especially in GNSS degraded environments ((indoor, outdoor and mixed scenarios) which can be found in some industrial applications. These include cases with temporal GNSS outages, low number of visible satellites (e.g. 1, 2 or 3 satellites) and strong multipath/NLOS conditions. The objective is to improve the PNT performance in terms of availability and accuracy at a low cost.

Project Objectives 

The MSFUSION project aims to develop a set of bread boards for a car and a human operator with advanced localisation algorithms from multiple sensors that are fused to provide an accurate and reliable positioning solution across a diverse set of use cases that encompass almost all major challenges.

• Adaptive techniques (including those using Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning) for adaptively tuning the sensor fusion algorithms.
• Architectures and techniques (including those using Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning) exploiting clusters of multiple low-cost sensors of the same type (e.g. multi-IMU systems) so that the error of the combined measurement (and associated drift for dead-reckoning techniques) is reduced with respect to the individual sensors.
• Use of stable timing references (e.g. Miniaturized Atomic Clocks) for improved PNT performance.
• Tightly coupled multi-sensor techniques to improve the convergence time of PPP algorithms and the availability of accurate PNT (considering at least the case of floating ambiguities). 
• Integration of multiple heterogeneous sensors including odometer, , visual camera, ranging sensors (e.g. LiDAR, Time-of-Flight), IMUs and multi-GNSS receiver.