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LOS ANGELES, August 22, 2007 Ñ HRL Laboratories LLC has demonstrated a quartz etching capability that will enable a breakthrough in the size and cost of navigation grade gyroscopes. Such gyroscopes are used to measure pitch, roll, and yaw attitude angles in spacecraft, aircraft and other vehicles.
The Malibu, California, research facility attained the first milestones in this program in Phase I, using several novel techniques to obtain precision and control of components on the nanometer scale. In Phase II, a 12-month contract award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), HRL and team-member the Boeing Company will collaborate on further refinements of the gyroscope. HRL will focus on an etched eight-millimeter all-quartz resonator, which will eventually be integrated with the low power electronics being developed by Boeing.
The ultimate goal of the Navigation-Grade Integrated Micro Gyroscopes (NGIMG) program is to provide an ultra-small gyroscope with state-of-the-art stability at a lower cost for navigation applications. To achieve this, HRL will construct a micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) version of the commercially available Hemispherical Resonator Gyro (HRG). This device has demonstrated navigation grade performance but is a relatively large and high cost unit. Boeing expects that besides the DARPA applications, this progressive technology will be used in a wide variety of their commercial and military markets.
HRL and Boeing are also collaborating on this program with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
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HRL Laboratories, LLC, Malibu, California, is a corporate R&D laboratory owned by Boeing and General Motors. HRL provides custom R&D and performs additional R&D contract services for its LLC Members, for the U.S. government, and for other commercial entities.
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