APPARATUS FOR DETERMINING THE CENTER OF GRAVITY OF PASSENGERS IN A VEHICLE, NAMELY AN AIRCRAFT
First Claim
1. An apparatus for determining the instantaneous position of the center of gravity of passengers sitting at random in aligned rows of seats in an elongated vehicle, namely an aircraft, comprising a clock oscillator supplying recurrent pulses;
- at least one pulse counter of definite capacity receiving said pulses and comprising a cascade of flip-flops acting as binary dividers;
a number of coincidence circuits corresponding to the number of rows, each connected in a definite arrangement to some of said binary dividers for defining a sharing interval of a cycle of pulses corresponding to the counter capacity with each sharing interval corresponding to one row and comprising a number of pulses at least slightly greater than the number of seats of the row multiplied by the number of said rows;
divider means relating to said number of said rows with one connected to the output of each of said coincidence circuits for producing enlarged pulses having the duration of an elementary pulse multiplied by said latter number;
a number of shift registers each including a number of stages corresponding to the number of seats in a row with one connected to the output of said divider means foR registering a possible number of enlarged pulses corresponding to the number of seats in the corresponding row;
a detector of each occupied seat connected to one stage of one of said shift registers for allowing registration in said stage of one enlarged pulse only when the seat is actually occupied;
first integrator means connected to all said shift registers for summing all the enlarged pulses;
a pulse generator also connected to all said shift registers for generating a pulse of even duration for each enlarged pulse;
second integrator means for summing said even duration pulses; and
analogue divider means for dividing the signal output from said first integrator by the signal output from said second integrator.
0 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
The invention is concerned with an apparatus for determining the center of gravity of a group of objects which are distributed randomly in the squares of a two dimensional grid system having an arbitrarily chosen origin. Each object is detected and two electrical signals are generated for each detected object a first signal having a constant strength and length and a second signal having a constant strength and length proportional to the distance from the origin of the object. The sum of the first signals is representative of the total weight of the objects and the sum of the second signals is representative of the sum of the moments of the objects about the origin. The quotient of the two sums is measured and represents the center of gravity of the objects relative to the origin.
25 Citations
6 Claims
-
1. An apparatus for determining the instantaneous position of the center of gravity of passengers sitting at random in aligned rows of seats in an elongated vehicle, namely an aircraft, comprising a clock oscillator supplying recurrent pulses;
- at least one pulse counter of definite capacity receiving said pulses and comprising a cascade of flip-flops acting as binary dividers;
a number of coincidence circuits corresponding to the number of rows, each connected in a definite arrangement to some of said binary dividers for defining a sharing interval of a cycle of pulses corresponding to the counter capacity with each sharing interval corresponding to one row and comprising a number of pulses at least slightly greater than the number of seats of the row multiplied by the number of said rows;
divider means relating to said number of said rows with one connected to the output of each of said coincidence circuits for producing enlarged pulses having the duration of an elementary pulse multiplied by said latter number;
a number of shift registers each including a number of stages corresponding to the number of seats in a row with one connected to the output of said divider means foR registering a possible number of enlarged pulses corresponding to the number of seats in the corresponding row;
a detector of each occupied seat connected to one stage of one of said shift registers for allowing registration in said stage of one enlarged pulse only when the seat is actually occupied;
first integrator means connected to all said shift registers for summing all the enlarged pulses;
a pulse generator also connected to all said shift registers for generating a pulse of even duration for each enlarged pulse;
second integrator means for summing said even duration pulses; and
analogue divider means for dividing the signal output from said first integrator by the signal output from said second integrator.
- at least one pulse counter of definite capacity receiving said pulses and comprising a cascade of flip-flops acting as binary dividers;
-
2. The apparatus of claim 1 further characterized by said detector of an occupied seat being an electric contact operated by the pressure of a passenger in the seat.
-
3. The apparatus of claim 1 further characterized by a zero resetting signal means including another series of flip-flops connected to another coincidence circuit which delivers at one end of the pulse cycle determined by the final flip-flop of said series of flip-flops a zero resetting signal to the complete apparatus.
-
4. The apparatus of claim 1 further characterized by a coincidence gating circuit connected between each of said number of coincidence circuits corresponding to the number of rows and said connecting divider means relating to said number of said row, said coincidence gating circuit also connected to receive a signal from said clock oscillator.
-
5. The apparatus of claim 1 further characterized by an OR gate connected between all of said shift registers and said first and second integrator means.
-
6. The apparatus of claim 1 further characterized by storage means to store the output signals from both said integrator means connected to said first and second integrator means, a zero resetting signal means electrically connected to add a zero resetting signal to the outputs from said integrator means before input to said analogue divider means.
Specification