Angular velocity sensor

• US 6,089,091 A
• Filed: 06/14/1999
• Issued: 07/18/2000
• Est. Priority Date: 05/30/1995
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Limited (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Limited (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Tamura, Masami, Uemura, Takeshi, Nozoe, Toshiyuki
• Primary Examiner(s): Williams, Hezron
• Assistant Examiner(s): MOLLER, RICHARD ALAN
• Application Number:
  US09/332,161
• Time in Patent Office: 400 Days
• Field of Search: 73/504.16, 73/1.77, 73/1.75, 73/1.37
• US Class Current: 73/504.16
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 19/5607 using vibrating tuning forks double-ended tuning forks using planar vibrating masses suspended at opposite ends G01C19/5719
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/28 with correlation of data from several navigational instruments
• CPC Class Codes: G01P 21/02 of speedometers
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/52 Determining velocity
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/53 Determining attitude

Abstract

The present invention aims to present an angular velocity sensor having a self diagnosis function.

An angular velocity sensor of the present invention includes a driving part for stably vibrating a driving part of a sensor element having a driver part and a detector part for detecting an angular velocity and detection means for detecting the angular velocity of the sensor element and obtains a self diagnosis signal for a malfunction by detecting a mechanical coupling signal obtained at the detection means.

Claims

1. An angular velocity sensor comprising:

an output terminal for taking out an angular velocity output from a detector comprising a driving part, drive means for driving said driving part and detection means for detecting an angular velocity output; and

self diagnosis means for outputting a signal for self diagnosis by detecting a mechanical coupling signal other than an angular velocity signal from said detector,

wherein said detector comprises a tuning fork type driver part and detector plates attacked at the ends of both driver plates composing said driver part and in an orthogonal direction to said driver plates,

wherein detected mechanical coupling signal caused by a mechanical coupling between said detector plates is a self diagnosis signal, and

wherein a mechanical coupling signal obtained from said detector plates is supplied to a charge amplifier, a rectifier, a filter, and a judge circuit,

said angular velocity sensor having a composition to initially set a sum of mechanical coupling signals obtained from said two detector plates to zero.

2. An angular velocity sensor as recited in claim 1, having a composition to supply an output of a judge circuit of said driver part and an output of a monitor circuit to a logical sum circuit.