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A Simple Method for Synchronising Multiple IMUs using the Magnetometer

Authors:

Thomas Gilbert,

Sally Day,

Antonia F De C Hamilton,

Jamie WardAuthors Info & Claims

ISWC '22: Proceedings of the 2022 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers

Pages 100 - 102

https://doi.org/10.1145/3544794.3558466

Published: 27 December 2022 Publication History

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Abstract

This paper presents a novel method to synchronise multiple IMU (inertial measurement units) devices using their onboard magnetometers. The method described uses an external electromagnetic pulse to create a known event measured by the magnetometer of multiple IMUs and in turn used to synchronise these devices. The method is applied to 4 IMU devices decreasing their de-synchronisation from 270ms when using only the RTC (real time clock) to 40ms over a 1 hour recording. It is proposed that this can be further improved to approximately 3ms by increasing the magnetometer’s sample frequency from 25Hz to 300Hz.

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Gilbert TLin ZDay SHamilton AWard J(2024)A magnetometer-based method for in-situ syncing of wearable inertial measurement unitsFrontiers in Computer Science10.3389/fcomp.2024.13853926Online publication date: 19-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomp.2024.1385392
Meier MHolz C(2023)BMARProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/35962687:2(1-21)Online publication date: 12-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3596268

Index Terms

A Simple Method for Synchronising Multiple IMUs using the Magnetometer
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Ubiquitous and mobile computing
    1. Ubiquitous and mobile computing systems and tools

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ISWC '22: Proceedings of the 2022 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers

September 2022

141 pages

ISBN:9781450394246

DOI:10.1145/3544794

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Published: 27 December 2022

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UbiComp/ISWC '22: The 2022 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing

September 11 - 15, 2022

Cambridge, United Kingdom

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Gilbert TLin ZDay SHamilton AWard J(2024)A magnetometer-based method for in-situ syncing of wearable inertial measurement unitsFrontiers in Computer Science10.3389/fcomp.2024.13853926Online publication date: 19-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomp.2024.1385392
Meier MHolz C(2023)BMARProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/35962687:2(1-21)Online publication date: 12-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3596268

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INS/magnetometer integrated positioning based on neural network for bridging long-time GPS outages

Frequency-Estimation-Based Thigh Angle Prediction in Level-Ground Walking Using IMUs

Inertial Measurement Units in Gait Analysis Applications

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