Small and light OEM IMU offers high accuracy and stability in demanding conditions

Xsens has launched the Xsens Avior, a lightweight, OEM form factor IMU with a compact 36.8mm x 40mm footprint, which provides enhanced performance in a wide variety of industrial and commercial applications.

The device is ideal for high-volume products, thanks to its vertical 10x2-pin socket connector for simple board mounting and its tolerance of any mounting orientation in all three axes. The product also facilitates design integration, as it includes onboard UART, CAN, SPI, and I2C interfaces, and supports RS-232 and RS-422 via the product’s development kit or an external transceiver.

The company has integrated a new generation of sensing components in the IMU, as well as advanced analogue filtering for higher stability and noise reduction, resulting in substantially better performance compared to the previous generation product. Heading accuracy is 1° RMS and roll and pitch accuracy is 0.2° RMS. Stability is also improved in the device: the gyroscope exhibits in-run bias stability of 8°/hr, and the accelerometer achieves in-run bias stability of 15μg.

Weighing just 35.2g, the device is enclosed in a robust aluminium housing and has an IP51 rating and an operating temperature range of -40C to 85C. The sensor’s small size, light weight, high performance and robust construction provide outstanding value in applications such as:

• Camera/payload stabilisation, including SOTM (SATCOM-on-the-Move) devices
• Marine equipment – remotely-operated vehicles (ROVs), autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), sensor buoys
• Mobile robots and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs)
• Drones, 3D mapping, and surveying tools
• Humanoid robots
• Industrial control and embedded motion systems

Martina Ravizza, product manager at Xsens, said: ‘The Xsens Avior gives engineers a flexible, robust, and developer-friendly inertial sensing solution which is ready to scale. Whether an engineer is building a robotic system, autonomous vehicle, stabilised platform, or a smart mobility solution, Xsens Avior is a perfect fit for their design requirements.’

The new sensor is available in three versions:

• IMU provides calibrated inertial sensor data
• Vertical Reference Unit (VRU) providing accurate, calibrated values for roll and pitch, and unreferenced yaw data
• Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS), providing accurate, calibrated roll and pitch values, and heading data referenced to true North

The Xsens Avior is available in a ready-to-use hardware development kit, supplied with free software development kits that support C#, C++, Python, ROS 1, ROS 2, and MATLAB environments. It also includesnd full documentation and step-by-step guides for design integration.

Key product specifications:

• Typical power consumption: <0.5W
• Maximum output data rate: 400Hz
• Gyroscope full range: ±300°/s
• Accelerometer full range: ±8 g
• Magnetometer full range: ±8 G
• Fully supported in the MT Software Suite development environment
• Certifications: CE, FCC, RoHS, ITAR free