A Flightworthy Breadboard System for Computing Stability, Attitude, and Heading from Body-Mounted Sensors.
Abstract
A three-year development effort has culminated in a flightworthy breadboard model of a 'strapdown' flight-attitude and heading-reference system which is functionally equivalent to a slaved, four-gimbal (no-gimbal-lock), all-attitude platform. Strapped-down rate gyros, linear accelerometers, and magnetic sensos provide the three-axis, body-referenced, inertial and magnetic information from which a unique, solid-state, time-shared coordinate transformer derives the angular rate, linear acceleration, and magnetic field component signals with respect to the conventional, earth-referenced azimuth, elevation and bank axes. The Eulerian angular rate signals are operated upon by integrating and interfacing functions which provide the desired attitude angle output information in two signal formats: (1) a DC analog format for feedback to the resolvers in the coordinate transformation arrays, and (2) a three-wire synchro format to drive a conventional, ball-type, aircraft attitude indicator. In addition, heading and verticality reference signals are derived from the sensed acceleration and magnetic field information, and these signals are used to slave the attitude angle integrators to the local vertical and magnetic North. Logic and storage functions are also provided for automatically cutting out the acceleration control of the verticality slaving function under certain acceleration conditions and substituting a short-term, stored-magnetic-field-information control of this function. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 1971
- Accession Number
- AD0890488
Entities
People
- Aurale R. Deruyck