Inertial Sensors
Colibri has been strongly active in this field since 1985.
Our extensive hands-on experience comes from both micro-gyro concepts developed and patented in-house and from taking part in several industrial and EU projects addressing accelerometers, gyros and inertial measurement units (IMUs). Unfortunately, details about these activities cannot be disclosed here due to strict Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs).
The general industrial experience that a project starts first when entering the commercialization phase clearly applies to these micro-components. In fact, the small magnitude of the amplitudes to be detected makes performance essentially determined by how well potential error sources are handled, and not by the two obvious parameters scale factor and noise. One needs to consider many multiphysics domains to fully understand how to reach the performance potential and in implementing this in a successful development. Thus, an in-depth hands-on experience of this group of sensors is essential if the right performance and design parameters are to be addressed quickly and correctly in a commercially successful way.
Your projects: We offer our extensive experience to external, industrial-oriented inertial sensor projects, including accelerometer and gyro projects. In addition to participating in your development activities, we can help you with feasibility studies, failure analysis, evaluation of existing components and systems, etc.
In-house project: Colibri has previously developed and patented a micromachined gyro based on a quartz tuning fork (gereral info, and conference presentation (pdf)). Licenses were granted to the German automotive industry and to the military industry. In early 2007 the patents were sold and Colibri's inertial efforts are now, under strict NDAs, fully focused on helping other companies.