Leírás
The main goal of the experiment, conducted by Tibor Kapu aboard the International Space Station (ISS), was to (i) characterize sensor behavior, and, (ii) study dead reckoning capabilities of a consumer-grade - e.g. component of a mobile phone - IMU dead reckoning performance in sustained microgravity.
Unlike terrestrial environments, where gravity provides a constant reference, the unique microgravity conditions offer valuable insights into fundamental, short-term inertial navigation behavior without gravitational interference.
The experimental results reveal several key findings unique to the microgravity environment: (i) stationary sensor behaviour is similar to as on Earth, (ii) deterministic Lie group‑based integration provides stable reconstruction for geometric motion primitives, (iii) magnetometer‑aided filtering exhibits unexpected degradation due to ISS electromagnetic disturbances, and (iv) conventional drift mitigation techniques such as zero‑velocity updates show fundamental limitations in the absence of gravitational reference and well‑defined stationary periods.