In a combine harvester with a belt pickup platform, the attitude of the belt pickup is automatically controlled in any one of three preselected ranges by an electrical position sensor switch. The switch is mechanically actuated by connection between the pickup and its platform so as to send raise or lower signals to the electrohydraulic control system of the combine. The belt pickup is torsionally flexible and the mechanical input to the electrical position sensor switch is arranged so that the ...

A hermetically sealed float switch having a bistable ball cage therein. The ball cage is free to pivot between either of two spring biased, over center positions responsive to the position of a ball which is free to roll from either end of the race through the cage to the other end of the race. An over center spring holds the ball cage in its last operated position. A safety arm prevents the ball cage from changing its attitude in any manner which, if uncontrolled, might permit the ball to escap...

A reactive attitude stabilization system to be carried by a vehicle is provided where a first shaft is pivotally mounted on the vehicle in a normally horizontal relation. A second shaft is supported in horizontal relation at its midpoint by the first shaft and oriented perpendicular to the first shaft. Nonrotating slide bearings support a platform on the second shaft for translation of said second shaft relative to the platform. Resilient members oppose translation of the second shaft relative t...

The attitude control is provided under utilization of the solar wind in that the effective surface area of solar panels facing the sun is controlled in accordance with certain rules of asymmetry and under utilization of pulling cable so that an imbalance in received solar pressure is utilized to change the attitude of the satellite.

A valve assembly for relieving intracraneal pressure includes a valve housing adapted for implantation and having an inlet port for connection to a ventricular catheter and an outlet port for connection to a venus or peritoneal catheter. The valve housing includes a fluid passage, the flow through which is controlled by a first pressure responsive valve of relatively high resistence and a second pressure responsive valve of relatively low resistence spaced downstream of said first pressure respo...

A system for measuring the relative orientation between two objects. A transmitter/receiver assembly on one of the objects transmits a beam of monochromatic light to a Ronchi-type retro-grating disposed on the other object. The grating reflects the light back to one or more charge transfer device area arrays in the transmitter/receiver assembly which provides orientation data to a computer which determines relative pitch, yaw and roll between the two objects.

An adjustable attitude speaker stand including a base in the form of a pair of laterally spaced apart elongated rails having longitudinal slots formed therein. A pair of posts rise upwardly from the slots and are coupled thereto by followers for forward and rearward movement relative thereto. The upper extremities of the post are also formed with generally vertically extending slots and braces are pivotally connected to the rear extremities of the rails and include followers coupled with such po...

A method and system for tracking attitude of a device includes fixing a two-dimensional array of photosensors to the device and using the array to form a reference frame and a sample frame of images. The fields of view of the sample and reference frames largely overlap, so that there are common imaged features from frame to frame. Sample frames are correlated with the reference frame to detect differences in location of the common features. Based upon detection of correlations of features, an at...

An attitude sensing system utilizing simplified techniques and apparatus includes a spacecraft control processor which receives signals from an inertial measurement unit and two attitude sensors. The spacecraft control processor calculates a time-varying gain matrix for estimating attitude errors and gyroscope drifts corresponding to the axes of the inertial measurement unit. In special cases where the separation angle between the attitude sensor vectors is less than approximately 10 degrees, th...

An attitude sensing system which incorporates the precision in attitude sensing of a satellite navigation system with the dynamic tracking capabilities of an inertial measurement unit. Optimally estimated attitude and system error signals are combined with the outputs of an inertial measurement unit to control the phase differences of signals received on an interferometer array from a navigation satellite. The outputs from the inertial measurement unit and the phase differences are processed in ...