David J. Barton
The University of California at Irvine has selected Northrop Grumman Corp. as a subcontractor to help address the long-term calibration of inertial sensors used for navigation, pointing and stabilization applications, Northrop announced Monday.
This subcontract is part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency“™s Primary and Secondary Calibration on Active Layer effort of the Micro-Technology for Positioning, Navigation and Timing program.
Charles Volk, vice president and chief technology officer at Northrop Grumman stated that the research will attempt to advance sensor technology and accuracy with reduced costs.
Northrop Grumman will collaborate with the University of California to develop and integrated, ultraminiaturized microsystem with in-situ calibration capabilities co-located with inertial sensing elements, according to the company.
The effort is essential to the micro-electro-mechanical system inertial instruments which are vulnerable to long-term instabilities that could bring measurement inaccuracies.
Inertial sensors measure rotation rate and acceleration and are used in a variety of navigation, pointing and stabilization applications.
In-situ calibration of inertial devices helps prevent the need for components to be recalled from the field for recalibration by the manufacturer and then reinserted into the platform, thereby minimizing the life cycle costs of the system, Northrop said.
The PASCAL effort is part of the DARPA Micro-PNT program designed to develop technology for self-contained, chip-scale inertial navigation and precision guidance.
