Temic Telefunken Microelectronic Gmbh

Christian Held

Richard Baur

Helmut Steurer

Alfons Wohrl

Hermann Kublbeck

A process and a mechanism for the direction-selective triggering of a passive safety device in a vehicle, with at least two acceleration transducers, where the acceleration transducers have directional sensitive axes and these have actual instantaneous orientations and are aligned in different, preferably specified reference orientations and there is an angle tolerance between the reference and the instantaneous orientations of the sensitive axes. An evaluation device is provided to correct the angle tolerance, comprising an electronic circuit which converts the signals (am 1, am 2, . . . am n) coming from the acceleration transducers to corrected output signals (a(I), a(II), . . . a(n)), which are linear combinations of the incoming signals with adjustable factors c.sub.ij : ##EQU1## This can lessen the expense of production compared to familiar mechanisms, without simultaneously reducing the measuring accuracy of the mechanism. In particular, if acceleration transducers with considerably higher angle tolerances are used, it is possible to achieve a higher level of measuring accuracy and sensitivity can be equalized and angle tolerance offset simultaneously in a single, inexpensive operation.

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Schrobenhausen, Germany

Christian Held