Industrial Robot Tool Position Estimation using Inertial Measurements in a Complementary Filter and an EKF

In this work an Inertial Measurement Unit is used to improve tool position estimates for an ABB IRB 4600 industrial robot, starting from estimates based on motor angle forward kinematics. A Complementary Filter and an Extended Kalman Filter are investigated. The Complementary Filter is found to perform on par with the Extended Kalman Filter while having lower complexity both in the tuning process and the filtering computations.