Media.Player

Broadband Distributed-Mass Micromachined Gyroscope

Technology Application

This design has potentially wide applications including high performance navigation and guidance systems, automotive safety systems like yaw and tilt control, roll-over protection and next generation air bag and antilock braking systems, and consumer electronics such as image stabilization in video cameras.

Detailed Technology Description

University researchers have invented a distributed-mass micromachined gyroscope which minimizes quadrature error, eliminates effects of directional residual stresses, and completely decouples the drive and sense modes. The device has multiple drive-mode oscillators, distributed symmetrically around the center of a supporting frame. The multi-directional linear drive-mode and the rotational sense-mode allows complete decoupling of the drive and sense direction oscillations, minimizing instability and zero-rate drift due to dynamical coupling between the drive and sense modes. Due to the radial symmetry, the drive forces applied to the drive-mode oscillators cancel out in all directions, and the quadrature error is effectively nullified. The effects of directional residual stresses are also eliminated, due to the multi-directional and symmetric nature of the drive-mode oscillators. The device also provides a wide-bandwidth operation region in the drive-mode frequency response. By designing each drive-mode oscillator to have incrementally spaced resonance frequencies, the total Coriolis torque is set at a constant value over a wide range of driving frequency. If the sense-mode resonance frequency is designed to be accommodated in the same frequency band, robustness and insensitivity to parameter fluctuations is achieved.

Supplementary Information

Patent Number: US7100446B1
Application Number: US2004895508A
Inventor: Acar, Cenk | Shkel, Andrei M.
Priority Date: 20 Jul 2004
Priority Number: US7100446B1
Application Date: 20 Jul 2004
Publication Date: 5 Sep 2006
IPC Current: G01P000904 | G01C001900
US Class: 07350413 | 07350412
Assignee Applicant: The Regents of the University of California
Title: Distributed-mass micromachined gyroscopes operated with drive-mode bandwidth enhancement
Usefulness: Distributed-mass micromachined gyroscopes operated with drive-mode bandwidth enhancement
Summary: As micromachined z-axis rate gyroscope.
Novelty: Micromachined z-axis rate gyroscope has oscillators that have incrementally-spaced drive mode resonance frequencies to allow all multiple drive mode oscillators to be excited together to generate a resultant Coriolis torque

Industry

Electronics

Sub Category

Semiconductor

Application No.

7100446

Others

Tech ID/UC Case

18859/2003-451-0

Related Cases

2003-451-0

*Abstract

None

*IP Issue Date

Sep 5, 2006

*Principal Investigator

Name: Cenk Acar

Department:

Name: Andrei Shkel

Department:

Country/Region

USA