Hardware in the Loop Simulation on Micro Electro Mechanical System Attitude Heading Reference System for Small Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

This paper proposes the hardware in the loop simulation (HILS) for the performance evaluation of a small attitude heading reference system (AHRS) based micro electromechanical system (MEMS), suitable for small autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV). AUV have many scientific, military, and commercial applications due to their autonomy. Furthermore, the navigation system is the most important system for AUV because correct position information is essential for autonomous missions. Since GPS signal is not accessible underwater, the inertial navigation system (INS) has conventionally been used as the navigation sys-tem for underwater vehicles. The MEMS AHRS will be a good alternative for the inertial sensor of INS of small AUV. Hardware in loop simulation (HILS) was performed to validate the developed MEMS AHRS with a flight motion simulator, and the results of the HILS showed that the developed MEMS AHRS is capable of providing the attitude information under roll free and no roll free conditions.