Dither control system for a ring laser gyro
AssigneeHoneywell International Inc.
InventorJoseph E. Killpatrick
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A dither control system for a laser gyro having a dither motor for dithering the laser gyro through a desired angular displacement, known as the command angle, in response to a drive signal. In order to help avoid saturation of the laser gyro, the dither control system reduces the command angle by command angle reduction data when the average drive signal applied to the dither motor exceeds a maximum drive value until the command angle reduction data reaches zero. The command angle reduction value is calculated by integrating the difference between the average drive signal and the maximum drive value.
Claims22
A dither control system for a dithered ring laser gyro having a pickoff source for providing pickoff data representative of a measured dither angle and a command angle source for providing command angle data representative of a desired command angle, comprising:
- modulated data generating means for generating modulated data as a function of dither error data and noise;
- average drive data generating means for generating average drive data as a function of the dither error data;
- dither drive data generating means for generating dither drive data as a function of the modulated data;
- a maximum drive source for generating maximum drive data as a function of a maximum desired value of the average drive data;
- command angle reduction data generating means for generating command angle reduction data as a function of the average drive and the maximum drive data;
- and
- dither error generating means for generating the dither error data as a function of the pickoff data, the command angle data, and the command angle reduction data.
A dither control method for dithering a ring laser gyro having a pickoff source for providing pickoff data representative of a measured dither angle and a command angle source for providing command angle data representative of a desired command angle, comprising:
- generating modulated data as a function of dither error data and noise;
- generating average drive data as a function of the dither error data;
- generating dither drive data as a function of the modulated data;
- generating maximum drive data as a function of a maximum desired value of the average drive data;
- generating command angle reduction data as a function of the average drive and the maximum drive data;
- and
- generating the dither error data as a function of the pickoff data, the command angle data, and the command angle reduction data.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.