ACEINNA Inc., which makes inertial-based guidance and navigation systems for autonomous vehicles and devices, yesterday said the ACEINNA OpenIMU ROS Driver is now available to robotics developers. The company provides positioning systems for the automotive, agricultural, construction, and other industries.

ACEINNA said developers can use its MEMS-based, open-source, inertial sensing systems to create easy-to-use, centimeter-accurate navigation systems. The company added that its current product family is based on AMR sensor technology that provides industry-leading accuracy, bandwidth, and step response in a simple, cost-effective, single-chip form factor.

The company won a 2020 RBR50 innovation award for its OpenRTK330L positioning system. ACEINNA has research and development facilities in Andover, Mass.; San Jose, Calif.; and Chicago, as well as manufacturing facilities in Wuxi, China.

ROS driver intended for easy integration

The Robot Operating System (ROS) makes the OpenIMU driver useful for multiple applications, said the company. It also allows for community support, shortening development times.

“The ROS user community builds on top of a common infrastructure to provide an integration point that offers access to hardware drivers, generic robot capabilities, development tools, useful external libraries, and more,” according to ROS.org.

“This new ROS driver makes it simple to integrate a wide variety of ACEINNA IMUs [inertial measurement unit sensors] into almost any robotics application — warehouse robotics, autonomous vehicles, last-mile delivery robotics, etc. — which uses ROS,” says James Fennelly, product marketing manager – inertial systems at ACEINNA. “When combined with our IMU’s industry-leading reliability and accuracy, as well as very competitive pricing [of] under $100, developers of robotic solutions finally have an easily integrated, rock-solid solution for their navigation and localization challenges.”

Available on the Sensors Page at ROS.org and GitHub, this new driver enables robotic application developers to quickly and easily integrate highly accurate (<1.5°/hr) IMUs into their navigation guidance systems, said ACEINNA.

ACEINNA OpenIMU family grows

The new ROS Driver works with the ACEINNA’s OpenIMU family, which includes the OpenIMU300ZI, OpenIMU300RI, and OpenIMU330BI. Each sensor has its own hardware features, allowing the user several options for their unique application, said the company.

The open-source nature of this architecture makes each device highly configurable as well, it added. ACEINNA’s OpenIMUs have several software applications available, with source code available via GitHub and the ACEINNA Extension on Microsoft Visual Studio Code. Software applications include IMU, VG-AHRS, and INS.

ACEINNA said its IMUs are compact and integrate a triple-redundant architecture. In combination with its small, low-cost packaging, the system meets the challenging performance, reliability, and cost requirements of the robotic and autonomous market, it said.

“Combining the architecture of the ROS environment with the versatility of the OpenIMU platform. the possibilities are endless and at the users’ fingertips,” the company said.