Could the acceleration signals be integrated to give X, Y, Z displacement co-ordinates?
It’s possible to double integrate accelerometer data, after proper co-ordinate transformations and subtraction of the acceleration due to gravity, to obtain 3D position data. To implement this in a practical implementation some issues will be encountered: 1) You will need a ‘starting point’, a reference 3D position, from which you can start to integrate the 3D acceleration data. 2) Noise on the acceleration data (about 1 mg RMS) and small offset errors and/or incorrectly subtracted acceleration due to gravity, will be integrated and over time will cause huge (drift) errors in the position and velocity estimate. The conclusion is that it depends very much on the (type) of motion you want to register if this approach is feasible. Typically, short duration movements, preferably cyclical, with frequent known reference positions will work well.
