The general purpose of this competitively awarded DARPA contract is to investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems. The specific purpose is to develop a micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) implementation of NGIMG, with the ultimate objective being the realization of tiny, low-power, rotation rate sensors capable of achieving performance, commensurate with requirements for GPS-denied navigation of small platforms, including individual soldiers, unmanned (micro) air vehicles, unmanned underwater vehicles, and even tiny (e.g., insect-sized) robots. By harnessing the advantages of micro-scale miniaturization, the NGIMG program is expected to yield tiny (if not chip-scale) gyroscopes with navigation-grade performance characteristics Successful completion of this 54 month project will enable completely autonomous navigation without any reliance on GPS. Project goals are gyro bias stability of 0.1°/hr and angular random walk of 0.005°/vhr in a one cubic cm package using less than 100mW of power for a six axis IMU.
NGIMG-enabled devices with characteristics similar to that listed above and achieved via low cost, batch fabrication methods are expected to enable a myriad of strategic capabilities. In particular, the sheer portability of the rotation rate sensors sought by the NGIMG program should introduce a host of new applications and deployment scenarios, including wearable inertial measurement units (IMU’s) for dismounted warriors, capable of GPS-denied navigation for lengthy periods; small IMUs for unmanned air and underwater vehicles, and for guidance of small, long-range munitions; and tiny IMUs for insect-like robots intended for a variety of future applications, including first warning perimeter sensing. Together with chip-scale atomic clocks (CSACs) and location-tracking algorithms that harness additional kinetic information (e.g., biokinetic), chip-scale NGIMGs should allow man-portable dead-reckoning devices with unprecedented precision, with and without GPS. By enabling a swelling of applications, as illustrated above, miniaturization via NGIMG technology is expected to generate a need for high volume manufacturing that, together with wafer-level batch fabrication methods enabled by MEMS technology, should substantially lower the cost of miniature navigation systems, and thus, further fuel expansion of the application suite for NGIMG technology.