Gyroscopic stabilization can be used to maintain an otherwise unstable body in an upright position. Devices equipped with gyroscopes can balance upon a small area or point without falling over when the gyroscopic stabilizing force is greater than a rotational force or moment from an out-of-balance load that causes the device to tip. A new concept for a gyroscopically stabilized platform has been proposed in the form of a schematic diagram. The proposed system comprises of four interconnected gyroscopes that react to the tipping of an inherently unstable external body. The purpose of this research is to evolve a design for, and establish the feasibility of building the proposed stable platform using available materials and technology. If feasible, the gyroscopically stabilized platform will be made at the most practical and economic size. Louis Brennan developed a 37 tonne monorail that was maintained in the upright position with two 3 tonne counter rotating gyroscopes. The Brennan monorail is analysed to better understand the behaviour of a similar coupled gyroscopic stabilization system. The reactions between the components that maintain the monorail in the stable position are studied and comparisons are made between the proposed stable platform and the Brennan system. A mathematical analysis of the proposed system is presented. The equations of motion for the system are derived using the Lagrangian Formalism. The characteristic equation of the system is then determined and from this a set of stability conditions imposed on the design of the physical parameters of the stable platform. The general solutions to the equations of motion are then derived. Expressions that model the behaviour of two of the variables that describe the motion of the stable platform are determined. A systematic approach is adopted for establishing a new concept for the proposed system. Testing of the initial stable platform prototype (Prototype A) showed the system did not behave as intended. The platform was optimised further and this resulted in a second prototype, Prototype B. Prototype B exhibiting the desired oscillatory motion about the vertical of the platform. Predictions made using the mathematical model are compared with empirical results. The mathematical model was found to be an accurate method for predicting the response of the stable platform.

No description available.

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are quickly becoming ubiquitous in commercial and military applications. As the use of such devices increases their reliability becomes of great importance. Although there has been significant research in the areas of MEMS errors, there is a lack of work regarding long term reliability of packaged systems. Residual thermomechanical stresses might relax over time which affects physical distances within a package, ultimately influencing the performance of a device. One reason that there has not been sufficient work performed on the long-term effects on structures might be the lack of a tool capable of characterizing the effects. MEMS devices have been measured for shape and its changes using interferometric techniques for some time now. Commercially available systems are able to make high resolution measurements, however they might lack loading options. To study aging effects on components a test might need to run continuously for days or weeks, with systematic operations performed throughout the process. Such a procedure is conducive to an automated data acquisition system. A system has been developed at WPI using a Twyman-Green interferometer and a custom software suite. The abilities of this system are demonstrated through analysis performed on MEMS tuning fork gyroscope (TFG) sensors. Specifically, shape is recorded to investigate die bond relaxation as a function of time and thermal cycle. Also presented are measurements made using stroboscopic illumination on operating gyroscopes, in situ. The effect of temperature on the performance of the sensors is investigated using a customized precision rate table.

This project surfaced through Hans-Erik Eldemark, business coach at Science Park Halmstad, who had been contacted by Boris Duran, Lecturer at the University Skövde and owner of the project. The idea of the project is to take a first step in the making of a motor driven simulator with a gyroscope design. The simulator will be implemented as part of virtual reality systems, computer games, flight simulators, training platforms, etc. The motors in this platform will be controlled by the movements of the user’s joystick allowing him/her a continuous and unlimited rotation. A very simple way of understanding the potential of this platform can be seen in a practical application such as a flight simulator since flying needs continuous and unlimited yaw, pitch and roll types of motion. A motor driven gyroscope is a novel and practical solution for this kind of applications.

The strapdown dynamically tuned gyroscope (DTG) is a candidate for use as the angular motion sensor in s'trapdown inertial navigation systems and autopilots. However, the dynamic performance of the strapdown DTG is one of the limiting factors restricting usage of the instrument in these systems. This research project considers control strategies to enhance the strapdown DTG performance. The DTG equations of motion are derived, with damping terms, and angular speed components introduced about the spin axis. The DTG equations of motion are solved numerically using a 4th order Runge-Kutta method, and taking advantage of rotating reference frames to eliminate time varying elements in the system matrix. This approach reduces the number of computations per time step and improves numerical stability. The tuning conditions for a multigimbal DTG are derived. A modal analysis is carried out on the DTG system matrix for different tuning conditions. This work provides the basis for the reduction of the DTG equations of motion to a free rotor gyroscope form. A parameter estimation procedure is designed which reflects the sensitivity of the DTG dynamic characteristics to certain parameters. A comprehensive experimental programme is carried out to validate the DTG mathematical model and estimate the numerical value of critical DTG parameters. A control strategy which processes the torquer and demodulator signals of the strapdown DTG is formulated. This strategy, used on the strapdown DTG, improves the diagonal dominance of the system transfer function matrix. Throughout the bandwidth the amplitude of the nutation response is at least 20 dB down on the amplitude of the precession response, compared with only 6 dB down on an uncompensated strapdown DTG. The compensator-strap down DTG system bandwidth is extended, compared to the strapdown DTG. The increase in bandwidth and improvement in system diagonal dominance depends on the precise form of the compensator and the manner of implementation; analogue, digital or hybrid. The compensator is feed-forward and can therefore be integrated into a system without altering the strapdown loops. The flexibility of the strategy enables the system designer to balance conflicting requirements of performance allied with minimal, cost, hardware and processing increases. An analogue and hybrid version of the compensator has been added to a strapdown DTG with subsequent test results in close agreement with theoretical studies. The control strategy has potential applications wherever strapdown DTG's are used.

Today digital TV receivers (Set-Top-Boxes) are mainly controlled by IR-based remote control units (RCUs). With new services emerging in thereceivers where better browsing and pointing abilities are desirable (VODservices, Web services, games etc), one solution is a new type of RF remotecontrol. An RF RCU has a number of advantages, e.g. when in range, ithas 100% reliable transmission, it is not sensitive to direction, and it doesnot require a free way to the receiver (i.e. it allows the receiver to be hiddenbehind the TV-set or in a cabinet).

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This dissertation reports on the design and implementation of a high-frequency, tri-axial capacitive resonant gyroscopes integrated on a single chip. The components that construct tri-axial rotation sensing consist of a yaw, a pitch and a roll device. The yaw-rate gyroscope has a wide bandwidth and a large full-scale range, and operates at a mode-matched condition with DC polarization voltage of 10V without frequency tuning requirement. The large bandwidth of 3kHz and expected full-scale range over 30,000˚/sec make the device exhibit fast rate response for rapid motion sensing application. For the pitch-and-roll rate sensing, an in-plane drive-mode and two orthogonal out-of-plane sense-modes are employed. The rotation-rate sensing from lateral axes is performed by mode-matching the in-plane drive-mode with out-of-plane sense-modes to detect Coriolis-force induced deflection of the resonant mass. To compensate process variations and thickness deviations in the employed silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates, large electrostatic frequency tunings of both the drive and sense modes are realized. A revised high aspect ratio combined polysilicon and silicon (HARPSS) process is developed to resolve the Coriolis response that exists toward out-of-plane direction while drive-mode exists on in-plane, and tune individual frequencies with minimal interference to unintended modes. To conclude and overcome the performance limitation, design optimization of high-frequency tri-axial gyroscopes is suggested. Q-factor enhancement through reduction of thermoelastic damping (TED) and optimizations of physical dimensions are suggested for the yaw disk gyroscope. For the pitch-and-roll gyroscope, scaling property of physical dimension and its subsequent performance enhancement are analyzed.

Long exposure handheld photography is coupled with the problem of blurring, which is difficult to remove without additional information. The goal of this work was to utilize motion sensors contained in modern smartphones to detect exact motion track of the image sensor during the exposure and then to remove the blur from the resulting photograph according to this data. A system was proposed which performs deconvolution using a kernel from the recorded gyroscope data. An implementation on Android platform was proved on a test smartphone device.

This thesis reports the development of a wide-bandwidth high-sensitivity mode-decoupled MEMS gyroscope showing robustness against ambient pressure variations. The designed gyroscope is based on a novel 2 degrees of freedom (DoF) sense mode oscillator, which allows increasing the operation bandwidth to the amount required by tactical-grade and inertial-grade operations while reaching the mechanical sensitivity of near matched-mode vibratory gyroscopes. Thorough theoretical study and finite element simulations verify the high performance operation of the proposed 2 DoF sense mode oscillator design. The designed gyroscope is fabricated using the in-house developed silicon-on-glass (SOG) micromachining technology at METU Microelectronics (METU-MET) facilities. The fabricated gyroscope measures only 5.1 x 4.6 mm square. The drive mode oscillator of the gyroscope reaches quality factor of 8760 under 25 mTorr vacuum environment, owing to high quality single crystal silicon structural layer. The sense mode bandwidth is measured to reach 2.5 kHz at 40 V proof mass voltage. When the fabricated gyroscope is operated with a relatively wide bandwidth of 1kHz, measurements show a relatively high raw mechanical sensitivity of 131 uV/(deg/s). Fabricated gyroscope is hybrid connected to external closed-loop drive mode amplitude control and open-loop sense mode readout electronics developed at METU-MEMS research group, to form a complete angular rate measurement system (ARMS). The scale factor of the ARMS is measured to be 13.1 mV/(deg/s) with a maximum R square nonlinearity of 0.0006 % and a maximum percent deviation nonlinearity of 0.141 %, while the maximum deviation of the scale factor for large vacuum level variations between 40 mTorr to 500 mTorr is measured to be only 0.38 %. The bias stability and angle random walk of the gyroscope are measured to be 131 deg/h and 1.15 deg/ rooth, respectively. It is concluded that, the mechanical structure can be optimized to show its theoretical limits of sensitivity with improvements in fabrication tolerances. The proposed 2 DoF sense mode oscillator design shows the potential of tactical-grade operation, while demonstrating extreme immunity to ambient pressure variations, by utilizing an optimized mechanical structure and connecting the gyroscope to dedicated low-noise electronics.