Using posture estimation to enhance personal inertial tracking

In close quarters combat, the lack of situational awareness can cause confusion, limit tempo of operations, and lead to fratricide. One approach to enhance the small-unit leader's situational awareness is to develop a network capable of mapping friendly positions. Current techniques for tracking the individual rifleman rely heavily on GPS, which does not work well indoors where satellite coverage is limited or even non-existent. One solution is to use inertial navigation systems to augment tracking during periods without GPS coverage. The goal of this research is to improve the current personal inertial navigation system by reducing or eliminating drift errors that are prevalent in this technology. The posture-tracking algorithm uses the YEI 3-space Data-Logging sensors to compute the posture of the individual rifleman. By tracking posture, stationary periods can be detected, and drift errors in the inertial navigation system are reduced. In the testing phase, the posture estimation algorithm was integrated with the personal navigation system, which is currently under development by concurrent research at the Naval Postgraduate School. Increased accuracy for inertial navigation systems that include posture tracking are demonstrated by the results of this thesis.http://archive.org/details/usingpostureesti1094549459Major, United States Marine CorpsApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited