Versatile inertial displacement sensor for planar motion

Inertial displacement sensors employing currently available high performance micromachined accelerometers and gyroscopes measure position and attitude with sub-micron accuracy for the duration up to several seconds. This performance makes them suitable for application in non contact multi-degree-of-freedom 'cross grids'. Because of the inertial based measurement, these new instruments alleviate severe disadvantages of the traditional testing devices, such as a high risk of collision, cost, size or long setup time, and application restrictions imposed by them. The paper presents the design and performance of a versatile 'cross grid', which employs high performance commercial accelerometers for the measurement of planar motion.