Displacement sensing by direct mechanical modulation of shaped electro-active micro structures

The development of a class of transducers designed to measure the relative displacement between two mechanical members and transmit that information, in coordination with other transducers, over a multiplexed bus with a minimum number of wires is described. As their basis, these transducers use the measurement of the variation in capacitive coupling between very small circuit elements on the surface of a silicon chip and AC field emitting elements on an adjacent planar structure. The circuit elements, which function as field detectors, generate signals that are used to estimate the position of the field emitting structure in digital or analog form. The transducer package, detector systems, emitter system, and supporting electronic circuits are discussed