Comparison of Attitude and Heading Reference Systems using Foot Mounted MIMU Sensor Data: Basic, Madgwick and Mahony

A magnetic and inertial measurement unit (MIMU) usually measures acceleration, rotation rate, and earth's magnetic field in order to determine a body's attitude. In order to find the orientation information using all sensors a fusion algorithm is used. This paper compares two approaches used for a Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS), namely Madgwick and Mahony with a basic fusion approach. Foot mounted MIMU data is used to estimate the Euler angles as well as the position. The results show that Madgwick obtains better heading orientation than Mahony and the basic AHRS approach in terms of the error (RMSE) of the Euler angles when compared to the ground truth. However, the execution time of Mahony is less than Madgwick with the basic AHRS taking the longest.