Our ultra-low bias IMUs and gyroscopes can help move your mission forward.
Ground robots spend their working lives where GNSS never reaches: warehouse aisles, factory floors, tunnels, stairwells. OSCP builds photonic and MEMS IMUs in Canada that keep a robot’s heading honest when there are no satellites and the floor is full of electrical noise.
The challenge
Indoors and underground, GNSS denial is not an outage. It is the whole mission, and the stack must dead-reckon indefinitely. The standard pair is an IMU fused with wheel odometry, and its weak point is slip: on dust, spills or ramps the encoders lose the plot and the gyro carries heading alone. A fraction of a degree of heading bias becomes metres of cross-track error down a long corridor.
Factory floors add EMI from motor drives and welders that corrupts electrical sensor readouts, plus shock and dust that bench-grade sensors do not survive.
How OSCP helps
Gyro quality keeps heading drift small between corrections. Both units publish 0.5 °/hr minimum in-run bias stability, typically under 1.0 °/hr, which holds heading between odometry corrections and map matches.
Optical sensing resists floor-level EMI. The MK2E2 measures rotation with light, via the Sagnac effect in a hybrid photonic integrated circuit, making it highly resistant to interference that corrupts electrical readouts.
Built for dirty work. Built to withstand harsh environments, so winter loading docks are inside spec. The MK2M2 and MK2E2 are both rated for rugged exposure.
Simple to integrate. RS-422 and CAN-FD drop into common stacks. ROS2 and ArduPilot drivers, a C SDK and Python examples ship with every unit, with online documentation available. The units are ITAR-free and made in Canada, so allied exports run under Canadian controls with no US approval in the loop.
Recommended configuration
| Product | Grade | Choose it when |
|---|---|---|
| MK2M2 | Tactical Grade MEMS IMU, 0.5 °/hr min in-run bias stability | The volume workhorse for odometry-aided fleets in moderate EMI. MEMS gyros are g-sensitive, so budget extra error under vibration and sustained acceleration. 40 x 40 x 25 mm, 75 g, 1.2 W. |
| MK2E2 | Tactical Grade Photonic IMU, 0.5 °/hr min in-run bias stability | EMI is severe or the drift budget is tight. No moving parts in the sensing path, and the gyro has no g-sensitive proof mass. 78 x 63 x 36 mm, 230 g, 2 W. |
Both units share < 15 µg accelerometer bias stability and the same RS-422 or CAN-FD interface on a 12 to 34 V supply, so shared interfaces keep integration work common across both. Note the MK2E2 is the larger unit, so it is not a mechanical drop-in for the MK2M2.
Proof
Our published case study is the closest road analogue to indoor robotics: a 21 minute Montreal drive with GNSS positioning denied, heading integrated from the gyro alone with a 1 Hz speed input for distance and no EKF. The MK2E2 finished 5.7 m from ground truth. The MK2M2 finished 20.5 m. Both units ran identical aiding, so the 3.6x gap is set almost entirely by heading drift. Drift integrates over time, and the same arithmetic governs a long aisle.
Frequently asked questions
Will motor drives and welders interfere with the IMU?
Motor drives and welders can affect any electronics, so we say highly resistant rather than immune. The MK2E2 measures rotation optically, via the Sagnac effect in a hybrid photonic integrated circuit, which leaves it far less exposed to electromagnetic interference than a purely electrical readout.
We already fuse wheel odometry and LiDAR. Why does gyro grade matter?
Because heading errors integrate. Wheel odometry fails exactly when you need it, on slip from dust, spills and ramps, and scan matching degrades in long featureless corridors and repetitive racking. Between those corrections the gyro carries heading alone, and a 0.5 °/hr gyro keeps that drift small enough for the rest of the stack to correct.
What environmental testing has been done?
Vibration passed at 2, 4 and 8 g and shock passed at 20 g and 40 g, both to DO-160 style profiles. Class A emissions and ESD both passed. Humidity and salt fog are not tested.