This paper discuss the application of a Gyroscope Free Inertial Measurement Unit (GF-IMU) for rocket. A GF-IMU is an inertial measurement unit that uses only sets of accelerometers to compute both translation and rotational of a vehicle, which in this case was a rocket. The elimination of gyroscope caused the system to be much cheaper (low-cost), compared to conventional inertial measurement unit. A cube type GF-IMU was used as a case study. The system were implanted in a payload test rocket (Roket Uji Muatan, RUM). The rocket was launch in August 2009 as part of student payload rocket competitions held by Indonesian National Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Lembaga Penerbangan dan Antariksa Nasional, LAPAN). The GF-IMU data were transmitted during flight and recorded on the ground station. Analysis were conducted to obtain the rocket translational and rotational accelerations by processing the data. The experience on manufacturing, transmitting, recording and processing data from GF-IMU on rocket application were described in the end his paper.

Ground stations,Gyroscope-free,IMU,Inertial measurement unit,INS,Rocket applications,Rotational acceleration

Accelerometer,Gyroscope-free,IMU,INS,Rocket