PinPoint® gyro helps navigate FLOORBOT

Having been extensively used for 'in-dash' satnavs in gyro-aided dead reckoning navigation for cars, PinPoint®’s latest achievement is being selected by FLOORBOTICS™ for use in self-guided robotic floor cleaning products for industry and the home. According to Duncan Ashworth, Director at FLOORBOTICS™ and the inventor of the ARNA™ robot navigation system "Mobile robots often need to know their relative orientation in the environment and therefore an accurate gyro, with low drift, is an important part of the navigation sensor fusion.  Silicon Sensing's PinPoint® precision MEMS navigation and pointing gyro - CRM100 - offers the lowest drift and fastest nulling speed for a sensor in such a small form factor. The company's excellent technical support with good documentation and reference design, and their responsiveness to our questions when first integrating and evaluating the gyro, were also deciding factors when it came to a selection decision."

PinPoint® CRM100 and CRM200 use Silicon Sensing's fifth generation Vibrating Structure Gyroscope (VSG) Coriolis angular rate sensor technology. At the heart of the tiny surface mount sensor is a 3mm diameter resonating silicon ring on which the thin film PZT transducers are deposited to provide the motion drive and sensing. The sputtering process for depositing the microns thick electrodes has been developed by Silicon Sensing in its MEMS foundry in Japan to the extent that the technology has a wide range of applications in other MEMS devices from micro-mirrors to inkjet printheads.

FLOORBOTICS™ International, with locations in USA and Australia, is a renowned and experienced leader in the field of robotics for industrial and domestic  floor cleaning machines.