Ricerc@Sapienza

The detection and characterization of U-turns during locomotion using Magneto-Inertial Measurement Units (MIMU) with the goal of segmenting the walking trial into straight walking bouts and turns is an open issue currently under investigation. Typically, a MIMU located on the lower back or trunk is used to this purpose and turns onset timing and duration are determined. The aim of this study was to assess if an existing method could be satisfactorily applied to signals recorded from MIMUs near the ankles.

The paper describes the design and development of an autonomous, low-cost, lowpower, low-mass attitude sensor, that requires no computational resources from the On-Board Computer. Application domain is small satellites (micro- and nano-satellites) the vast majority of which does not have a precision attitude determination and control, due to excessive cost, weight, volume and energy demand requirements, hard to meet in general when satellites have such small dimensions.