Navigation Sensors

We will be discussing the following sensors in this course:

• Odometers - An odometer measures how far a vehicle has traveled by counting wheel rotations. These are useful for measuring distance traveled (or displacement), but they are susceptible to bias (often caused by changing tire diameter). A "trip odometer" is an odometer that can be manually reset by a vehicle's operator.

• Inertial Measurement Unit - An Inertial Measurement Unit (or IMU) is used to measure a vehicle's heading, rotation rate, and linear acceleration using magnetometers, rate gyros, and accelerometers. We will discuss these sensors more in the next lesson.