Collin's Inertial Law predicts that inertial sensor precision improves by a factor of two every 5 years. Noise goes down, and we are able to predict when the target accuracy for upcoming applications will be available.
The future of the industry will see the development of motion sensors and an increase in computing power. The algorithms developed by Nordic Inertial glue these two together. Collin's Inertial Law, that has been in our internal use for several years, is finally revealed to the public.
Jussi Collin, how did you come up with the idea of Collin’s Inertial Law?
– Collin's Inertial Law has been formulated over the years. In the 2000–2005 era MEMS gyros were quite noisy, very sensitive to temperature changes. We jokingly called them thermistors at the time. Then, around 2008 VTI Technologies (acquired later by Murata) came up with very low bias instability.
– We could measure Earth rate with it, and even find the north direction. But it took a lot of time. I was wondering when it becomes a really usable function - idea to predict technology and use long term-planning for future applications, Jussi Collin, the CEO of Nordic Inertial explains.
How does Collin’s Inertial Law differ from Moore's law?
– (laughs) They go to different direction. Inertial sensor noise gets down, number of transistors up. Their product is constant. You get lots and lots of processing power and less and less noise when sensing the environment. Quite a pace when considering applications such as map-matching, SLAM etc. The technological synergy is evident, and we are building bridges with our algorithms at Nordic Inertial, Collin continues.
(Moore's law states that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years)
Where does Collin’s Inertial Law apply and how to use it?
– We have mainly used it for predicting gyroscope performance. But the law seems to apply to accelerometers as well. Noise processes in inertial sensors are a bit complex, and we consider a combination of them (all components of Allan variance go down). I've used a ring laser gyro as a benchmark, but that has very specific noise types. Other technologies approach this from different directions, and in some sense already goes beyond ring laser tech, says Collin.
Want to learn more about motion sensors and Collin’s Inertial Law? Contact Jussi Collin at jussi.collin@nordicinertial.com.
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