In various technological applications, enabling a machine to accurately grasp position and distance is key to realizing autonomous operation and movement of the machine. Applications such as robots, drones, and autonomous driving need to accurately sense the distance. This article will introduce ADI’s Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) to understand its application fields and product characteristics.
High-precision sensors assist with autonomous applications
Many analysts believe that the next generation of industrial revolution has come, driven by Industry 4.0 and autonomous systems. Automated and autonomous robots, vehicles, and drones are all closely related to manufacturing, mining, farming, and logistics processes, and are the key pillars that drive this industrial revolution.
In order to achieve the expected level of system performance for autonomous applications, equipment needs to not only sense their surroundings, but also be able to navigate. These goals can be achieved with the help of a sensing mode, whose output is fused and interpreted by traditional algorithms, artificial intelligence, or machine learning-based algorithms.
With the popularity of sensors on industrial machines, the data they provide is becoming richer, and the importance of their position and relative motion is also increasing. Autonomy is usually related to mobility, so accurately locating a vehicle, or guiding the movement of a machine, or precisely steering their instruments is a key enabler. If the technology can accurately detect these movements, it can be used in more difficult and valuable applications, controlling the positioning error within a few centimeters, and providing the safety and reliability that the applications require.
The ADIS16500 introduced by ADI is an IMU for precision miniature microelectromechanical system (MEMS), which can accurately provide distance sensing and positioning for the machine. It consists of a triaxial gyroscope and a triaxial accelerometer. Each inertial sensor in the ADIS16500 combines a signal conditioning function that optimizes dynamic performance, and is calibrated at the factory to give characteristics for each sensor's sensitivity, bias, alignment, linear acceleration (gyroscope bias), and point of percussion (accelerometer location). Therefore, each sensor has a dynamic compensation formula to provide accurate sensor measurements under a variety of conditions.
The ADIS16500 provides a simplified and cost effective method for integrating accurate multi-axis inertial sensing technology into industrial systems. Compared with the discrete designs, the ADIS16500 can reduce design complexity and time cost. The ADIS16500 has completed all necessary motion testing and calibration in the factory production process, greatly reducing system integration time. When used in a navigation system, tight orthogonal alignment simplifies the alignment process and time of the inertial coordinate system. The built-in Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) and register structure of the ADIS16500 have simple interfaces for data collection and configuration control.
The ADIS16500 has a built-in triaxial digital gyroscope, with a dynamic range of ±2000°/second, in-run bias stability of 8.1°/hour, angular random walk of x-axis and y-axis of 0.29°/√hour, 1 σ, axis to axis misalignment error of ±0.25°, and a built-in triaxial digital accelerometer, with a dynamic range of ±392 m/sec2, and in-run bias stability of 125 μm/sec2, enabling triaxial delta angle and delta velocity output. With factory-calibrated sensitivity, bias, and axial alignment, the calibration temperature range is −10℃ to +75℃.
The ADIS16500 has a built-in SPI compatible data communication function, programmable operation, and control that supports automatic and manual bias correction control, and a data ready indicator for synchronous data acquisition that supports external synchronization modes including direct, scaled, and output. Both inertial sensors and flash memory can be on demand self-test. Using a single supply operation (VDD) from 3.0 V to 3.6 V, it has mechanical shock survivability of 14,700 m/sec2, and can operate in the temperature range of −25℃ to +85℃.
The ADIS16500 is available in a 100-ball Ball Grid Array (BGA) package with a size of approximately 15 mm × 15 mm × 5 mm. It can be used for navigation, stabilization, and instrumentation, as well as for unmanned and autonomous vehicles, smart agriculture and construction machinery, factory/industrial automation, robotics, virtual/augmented reality, Internet of Moving Things, etc.
ADI has also launched evaluation tools to help accelerate customers’ product development. The EVAL-ADIS2 system provides a Windows-compatible evaluation system for most iSensor (ADIS16xxx) products. It comes with several application packages running on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 and uses a 32-bit or 64-bit USB driver.
The standard 16-pin interface of the EVAL-ADIS2 provides a connection path to all iSensor breakout boards (ADIS16xxx/PCBZ). The device under test (DUT) can be powered by a USB (+3.3V or +5V selectable options) or external power supply. For those familiar with the previous generation product system (EVAL-ADIS), EVAL-ADIS2 offers many important advancements, including the ability to connect the DUT with longer cables, and a wider operating temperature range (-40℃ to +85℃).
EVAL-ADIS2 provides a PC-USB inertial MEMS evaluation system with IMU and vibration evaluation software packages, which can synchronize data capture at the maximum sample rate, implement device configuration and validation through register access, and support standard 16-pin ribbon cable interface with all ADIS16xxx breakout boards, with a distance of up to 2m from the DUT.
With an ADIS16500/PCBZ breakout board, it is easy to establish a prototype connection between each ADIS16500 IMU model and the embedded processor platform. Each ADIS16500/PCBZ breakout board can also be connected to a J1 on the EVAL-ADIS2 evaluation system.
The ADIS16500/PCBZ breakout board has a small package size of 33.25 mm x 30.75 mm, providing convenient 2 mm pitch 16-pin (2 x 8) connectors, with one mounting hole (diameter 2.3 mm) at each of the four corners, and an ADIS16500AMLZ included.
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