Steering and stabilization system for vehicles

US4525784A · kind A · utility

Assignee

• Deutsche Forschungs- und Versuchsanstalt fur Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. · DE

Inventors

• Peter Hamel · Boulder, US
• Rudiger Karmann · Braunschweig, DE

Key dates

• Filing date: Aug 13, 1984
• Grant date: Jun 25, 1985
• Expiry date: Aug 13, 2004

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G01C9/005
• WIPO field: Measurement
• WIPO sector: Instruments

Abstract

A steering and stabilization system for an aircraft or other vehicle including a device, for the determination of attitude of the vehicle, in which three, or alternatively, two magnetometers are mounted in the vehicle with respect to the direction of its fore-and-aft axis to determine each co-ordinate of a set of three orthogonal co-ordinates of attitude of the vehicle and in which the orthogonal co-ordinates determined by the magnetometers are transformed into respective geodetic co-ordinates. The system also includes an additional sensor of attitude to provide supplementary information relating to one of the co-ordinates of attitude determined by the magnetometers, and a microcomputer by which signals representative of the transformed co-ordinates and signals representative of the supplementary information are coupled and control signals, required for a control and adjustment system of the vehicle, are calculated in accordance with signals representative of a predetermined motion of the vehicle with which the microcomputer has been programmed.