6DOF Sensing & Dynamic Impact Recorder for Measurement of Ejection Event Biodynamics

Despite advances in ejection seat design and injury mitigation, crew protection can likely be improved with better characterization of this hazardous environment during actual ejection events.Measurement of head/neck 6DOF motion in this environment has unique challenges.An ultra-low power system requires sensing deep sleep and idle states until a threshold is reached indicating an actual ejection event.Since ejection accelerations can have similar magnitude and duration as normal ACM, discrimination between these two event types can be difficult.For DTS SBIR work on a system to automatically jettison a HMDS during ejection events there was zero tolerance for false positives.In this application where ejection event data is the primary goal, the system may trigger and record previous ACM events, looping in memory to save the last, most recent events, including pre-trigger data and timestamps for the final ejection event(s) of interest.Unique to this proposal is a technical breakthrough in angular sensing technology.DTS proposes to deliver a revolutionary prototype 6DOF Dynamic Impact Recorder (DIR) that will have greater than 10-fold reduction in size and mass compared to existing systems.This autonomous system would be small, ultra-low power and weigh less than 20 grams.