Fusion of Ultrasonic Tracking with an Inertial Measurement Unit for High-Accuracy 3D Space Localization

Object position and orientation tracking using ultrasound (US) alone has been met with limited success. We achieved substantially improved tracking accuracy in three-dimensional (3D) space by fusing data from an US tracking system with that of an inertial measurement unit (IMU) using a position-adaptive Kalman filter. Compared to US tracking alone, the fused system improved stationary positional tracking accuracy and stability by 10.91% and 21.57%, respectively. These results indicate that a fused system that incorporates both US tracking and a low-profile IMU can deliver high-accuracy 3D space localization.