MEMS gyroscope and accelerometer based north finding system

The ability to precisely determine geographic location information is crucial for many navigation and location systems including in oil mining industry. There are few instruments used to sense north and estimating orientation such as; compass, electronics magnetometer, inertial gyroscope compass, digital magnetic compass, theodolite and Global Positioning System (GPS). The high quality gyroscopes, such as ring laser gyros able to maintain reading at high level, yet the device and technology is bulky and expensive. The accuracy of a compass and electronics magnetometer easily degraded by electromagnetic interference while GPS signals are not very reliable inside buildings. Hence, the MEMS gyroscope and accelerometer based north finding system is proposed to cater the raised problems. The automated system comprises of Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) gyroscope and accelerometer mounted horizontal on the rotator laser, where the whole system controlled by microcontroller Arduino Mega. The system proven an accuracy with complementary filter factor, a = 0.97 while the rotator has been calibrated using autocollimator and observed that the rotator successfully rotating at ±0.02° for a rotation angle from 0 ° to 360 °. Moreover, the field test results prove that the developed system achieve an accuracy of ±1.5° with respect to the true north.