483results about "Acceleration measurement using gyroscopes" patented technology

A driving mass of an integrated microelectromechanical structure is moved with a rotary motion about an axis of rotation, and a sensing mass is connected to the driving mass via elastic supporting elements so as to perform a detection movement in the presence of an external stress. The driving mass is anchored to a first anchorage arranged along the axis of rotation by first elastic anchorage elements. The driving mass is also coupled to a pair of further anchorages positioned externally thereof and coupled to opposite sides with respect to the first anchorage by further elastic anchorage elements; the elastic supporting elements and the first and further elastic anchorage elements render the driving mass fixed to the first sensing mass in the rotary motion, and substantially decoupled from the sensing mass in the detection movement, the detection movement being a rotation about an axis lying in a plane.

This invention relates to active protective garments which are inconspicuously worn by an individual and which activate upon certain conditions being met. Activation causes inflation of regions of the active protective garment to provide padding and impact cushioning for the wearer.

The invention is an active protective garment such as pair of shorts or pants, a jacket, a vest, underwear, and the like. The garments comprise multiple layers of material that constrain pockets or regions that are inflatable by a source of compressed gas or foam. The garments also comprise sensors to detect ballistic parameters such as acceleration, distance, relative acceleration, and rotation. The sensor information is used to determine whether activation is required. Detection and activation are accomplished in a very short time period in order to offer maximal protection for the individual wearing the garment. The system comprises a computer or logic controller that monitors the sensor data in real time and coordinates the information from all sensors. The system calculates velocity, distance, and rotational velocity. A rule-based system is used to detect a complex fall in progress and discriminate said fall in progress from the events of every day life. The pockets or inflatable regions of the garment protect the individual against falls and other impacts that may cause bone fracture or organ damage.

A system for observing a swimming activity of a person includes a waterproof housing (BET) having a motion sensor (MS), and is furnished with fixing means (BEL) for securely fastening the housing (BET) to a part of the body of a user. The system has analysis means (AN) for analyzing the signals transmitted by the motion sensor (MS) to at least one measurement axis and which are adapted for determining the type of swimming of the user as a function of time by using a hidden Markov model with N states corresponding respectively to N types of swimming.

A micro-machined multi-sensor that provides 1-axis of acceleration sensing and 2-axes of angular rate sensing. The multi-sensor includes a plurality of accelerometers, each including a mass anchored to and suspended over a substrate by a plurality of flexures. Each accelerometer further includes acceleration sense electrode structures disposed along lateral and longitudinal axes of the respective mass. The multi-sensor includes a fork member coupling the masses to allow relative antiphase movement, and to resist in phase movement, of the masses, and a drive electrode structure for rotationally vibrating the masses in antiphase. The multi-sensor provides electrically independent acceleration sense signals along the lateral and longitudinal axes of the respective masses, which are added and/or subtracted to obtain 1-axis of acceleration sensing and 2-axes of angular rate sensing.

A micro-mirror element includes a micro-mirror substrate, a wiring substrate and an electroconductive spacer disposed between the two substrates. The micro-mirror substrate is formed integral with a frame, a moving portion having a mirror portion, and a torsion bar connecting the frame to the moving portion. The wiring substrate is provided with a wiring pattern. The electroconductive spacer separates the micro-mirror substrate from the wiring substrate and also electrically connects the frame to the wiring pattern. The wiring substrate has a surface that faces the micro-mirror substrate. A detector is provided on this surface for detecting the pivot angle of the mirror portion.

A first aspect relates to an apparatus, system and method for calculating a driving behaviour risk indicator for a driver of a vehicle. Said aspect involves obtaining a count of events occurring in each of a plurality of predetermined categories based on inputs from an inertial unit mounted on the vehicle, the inertial unit including a 3D inertial sensor with 3D gyroscope functionality, each event being indicative of at least one of dangerous and aggressive driving; and calculating a driving behaviour risk indicator based on the number of events in each category. According to a second aspect, an apparatus and method for reconstructing a vehicle trajectory is provided. Said aspect includes updating a sensor error model.

Embodiments of the present invention are directed to apparatuses and methods of making a micromachined resonator gyroscope, e.g. a disc resonator gyro (DRG), including one or more of the following novel features. Embodiments of the invention may comprise a triple-wafer stack gyroscope with an all fused quartz (or all silicon) construction for an electrical baseplate, resonator and vacuum cap. This can yield superior thermal stability over prior art designs. A typical resonator embodiment may include a centrally anchored disc with high aspect-ratio in-plane electrostatic drive and sense electrodes to create large capacitance. A silicon sacrificial layer may be employed for attaching a quartz resonator wafer to a quartz handle wafer for high aspect-ratio etching. In addition, embodiments of the invention may comprise a low thermal stress, wafer-level vacuum packaged gyroscope with on-chip getter. An ultra-thin conductive layer deposited on the quartz resonator may also be utilized for high Q.

A sensor structure using vibrating sensor elements which can detect an angular rate and accelerations in two axes at the same time is provided. 2 sets of vibration units which vibrate in out-of-phase mode (tunning-fork vibration) and include four vibrating sensor elements of the approximately same shape supported on a substrate in a vibratile state are provided and the vibrating sensor elements are disposed so that vibration axes of the vibration units cross each other at right angles. Each of the vibrating sensor elements includes a pair of detection units and adjustment units for adjusting a vibration frequency. The vibrating sensor elements constitute a combined sensor having supporting structure for supporting the vibrating sensor elements independently so that the vibrating sensor elements do not interfere with each other.

A micro-gyroscope (10) having closed loop output operation by a control voltage (V_ty), that is demodulated by a drive axis (x-axis) signal V_thx of the sense electrodes (S1, S2), providing Coriolis torque rebalance to prevent displacement of the micro-gyroscope (10) on the output axis (y-axis) V_thy˜0. Closed loop drive axis torque, V_tx maintains a constant drive axis amplitude signal, V_thx. The present invention provides independent alignment and tuning of the micro-gyroscope by using separate electrodes and electrostatic bias voltages to adjust alignment and tuning. A quadrature amplitude signal, or cross-axis transfer function peak amplitude is used to detect misalignment that is corrected to zero by an electrostatic bias voltage adjustment. The cross-axis transfer function is either V_thy/V_ty or V_tnx/V_tx. A quadrature signal noise level, or difference in natural frequencies estimated from measurements of the transfer functions is used to detect residual mistuning, that is corrected to zero by a second electrostatic bias voltage adjustment.

A three-degrees of freedom (DOF) MEMS inertial micromachined gyroscope with nonresonant actuation with a drive direction, sense direction and a direction perpendicular to the drive and sense directions comprises a planar substrate, a 2-DOF sense-mode oscillator coupled to the substrate operated at a flattened wide-bandwidth frequency region, and a 1-DOF drive mode oscillator coupled operated at resonance in the flattened wide-bandwidth frequency region to achieve large drive-mode amplitudes.

A semiconductor type yaw rate sensor has a substrate, a beam structure formed from a semiconductor material and having at least one anchor portion disposed on the substrate, a weighted portion located above the substrate a predetermined gap therefrom, and a beam portion which extends from the anchor portion and supports the weighted portion. A movable electrode is formed onto the weighted portion, and a fixed electrode is formed on the substrate in such a manner that the fixed electrode faces the movable electrode. When a drive voltage is applied between the movable electrode and the fixed electrode, the beam structure is forcibly caused to vibrate in a direction that is horizontal relative to a substrate surface plane. In this yaw rate sensor, a strain gauge to monitor forced vibration of the beam structure is formed in the beam portion. As a result, the forced vibration of the beam structure can be monitored with a simple structure.

A system and method for more accurately and robustly estimating navigation state of a vehicle by adaptively processing signals from an inertial sensor assembly and other sensors. A navigation system receives signals from two or more sensors to evaluate and correct the attitude estimated by an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). The navigation system selects sensor signals from the other sensor assemblies and processes the selected sensor signals in conjunction with estimates from the inertial navigation module to obtain more accurate estimates of the attitude. The parameters and conditions for using certain sensor signals may be adjusted based on the characteristics and configuration of the vehicle.

An innovative configuration of Miniaturized Smart Self-calibration EPD for mortar applications, as the azimuth/heading and elevation measurement device. This innovative EPD configuration uses only two FOGs or DTG and accelerometers and it is self-contained. This leads to a new EPD implementation that produces a small and light device with lower cost and adequate accuracy for the small dismounted mortar applications.

Yaw rate sensors are provided, the use of which permits quantitative measurement of yaw rate. The yaw rate sensor comprises at least a base, a first suspension and a second suspension with a proof mass supported between the two suspensions, which together form a resonator. The first suspension has a pair of thin-wire driving electrodes double side patterned on the surfaces. When a driving voltage is applied to the driving electrodes, it imposes an electric field to piezoelectrically induce a driving resonance. When the sensor is rotated around its sensing axis, the resonator will be forced to generate a sensing resonance out of the driving resonance plane to compensate the change in the linear momentum which must be conserved. The piezoelectric charge signal generated by the sensing resonance on the sensing electrodes which are double side patterned on the surfaces of the second suspension is used to detect the yaw rate. Specifically, the amplitude of the sensing resonance is in proportion to the yaw rate. The structure of the yaw rate sensors of this invention is suitable for mass production by lithographic micromachining techniques at low cost.

A micro-machined MEMS resonator gyroscope and accelerometer is fabricated from an epilayer semiconductor wafer to incorporate a substantially planar, H-shaped resonator mass suspended from a support plate by two opposed elongated springs that couple to the relatively short crossbar member of the H. The masses are harmonically oscillated relative to the support plate and a baseplate portion, and two orthogonal modes of the structure corresponding to the two nearly degenerate fundamental torsional modes thereof are used for sensing angular rate about one axis, and linear acceleration along two axes, of the sensor. The H-shaped mass advantageously incorporates a relatively high length-to-width aspect ratio, and in one embodiment, the springs may advantageously incorporate either a square cross-section, such that the structure can be tuned to substantially match the fundamental frequencies of the two resonance modes of the structure by removing, e.g., by an etching process, a small amount of material from the upper surfaces of the springs.

X type MEMS gyroscope has a first mass vertically vibrating on a substrate and a second mass horizontally vibrating on the substrate. A driving electrode is disposed on the same surface with the first mass. When the first mass vertically vibrates, the second mass vibrates vertically together with the first mass. When angular velocity that is at a right angle to a movement direction of the first mass and the second mass is applied while the first mass is vertically vibrating, the second mass moves as Coriolis force is added to the second mass in a horizontal direction, and a sensing electrode measures displacement of the second mass in the horizontal direction. All moving electrodes and stationary electrodes are disposed on the same surface, and all elements are manufactured by using one mask. Therefore, adhesion between the moving and stationary electrodes is prevented and the manufacturing process is simplified.

The present invention which relates to the micro-mechanism electric technology provides a single-shaft and integrated device for measuring the inertia based on the single quality block. And the present solves the problems of the prior single-shaft and integrated assembly for measuring the inertia that the structure is complex, the volume and quality are big, etc. The single-shaft and integrated device for measuring the inertia includes a quality block and a glass cover bottom. The quality block which is hang on the upper of the glass cover bottom through a supporting beam includes a quality chip and four supporting bodies that are fixed with the four sides of the quality chip through the elastic beam. A moveable comb for detecting is fixed on the external of the supporting body relative to the Y direction and a moveable comb for driving is fixed on the external of the supporting body relative to the X direction. A fixed comb for detecting and a fixed comb for driving are fixed on the glass cover bottom, and electrodes for forming the capacitance are fixed on the lower end surface and the glass cover bottom of the quality chip. The device in the present invention has advantages of a reasonable structure, an easy processing, a high reliability, a small volume, a strong ability of resisting the interference, a high precision, a high precision of measuring the paralleling and orthogonality of the vectors, etc.