The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 04, 1996
Filed:
Aug. 11, 1994
John M Ironside, Birmingham, GB;
Andrew J Williams, West Midlands, GB;
Lucas Industries Public Limited Company, West Midlands, GB;
Abstract
A torque sensor, or relative angular movement sensor, capable of measuring the angular displacement of a component in a power-assisted steering system, comprises an input member coupled to one end of a torsion bar, an output member coupled to another end of the torsion bar, LED light sources, a pair of photodetector units adapted to receive light from the LED light sources, and signal processing means adapted to receive output signals from the photodetector units, the output signals of the photodetector units being dependent upon the light signals which they receive, and wherein the signal processing means is adapted to produce a modified output signal which closely matches and is representative of the angular position of a chosen portion of the torsion bar. The signal processing comprises various stages in which the output signals from the photodetector units are processed to generate possible estimates of the instantaneous position of the chosen portion of the torsion bar and the best estimate is calculated and processed to provide a complete position estimate representing the angular position of the chosen portion relative to an arbitrarily chosen zero position.