Estimating tilt using a three axis accelerometer

So currently I'm trying to estimate the tilt from my accelerometer in order to transform the acceleration in the sensor fixed frame to a vertical-horizontal coordinate system and was thinking that the angle can be calculated using simple trigonometry . Where a is the measured acceleration. Since I'm only concerned about the horizontal acceleration is this formula applicable as there will be tilt in all three axes? And if not is there some way I can estimate tilt with matlab toolboxes?

Answer 1

[nick]

Hi Alex,

The problem with measuring tilt using the method you proposed is that acceleration is a 3-dimensional vector. As such, the acceleration may contain a component in the direction of gravity, leading to an inaccurate estimation of tilt.

You can use "imufilter" function in MATLAB to estimate the tilt, as shown in the example below. However, it requires the readings from both gyroscope and accelerometer.

openExample('shared_positioning/EstimateOrientationFromIMUDataExample')

You can refer to the following documentation to learn more about the "imufilter" function:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/fusion/ref/imufilter-system-object.html

Hope this helps.