Safran’s HRG Crystal™ and Onyx™: a revolution in high-performance naval inertial reference systems

Safran reports on business developments of first months of 2020 at its 2020 Annual General Meeting. All of the resolutions approved by the Board of Directors are adopted by shareholders.

Safran Electronics & Defense is a pioneer in inertial navigation. The HRG Crystal™ hemispherical resonator gyro, patented by Safran, was developed in recent years, and more than 15,000 HRG type gyros have been delivered to date. The HRG Crystal™ offers the highest performance in its market segment.

Because of its simple design and mature technologies, the HRG Crystal™ allows Safran to develop new inertial navigation systems featuring ultra-high reliability for both civil and military applications, and offering a wide choice of performance specifications.

Invalid Scald ID.

The HRG Crystal™ gyro is based on the principles behind Foucault's pendulum and resonance; it could be compared to making a crystal wine glass "sing". The slight deformation of the glass generates a wave, and detecting the position of the wave allows measuring its rotation. The HRG Crystal™ does not need to communicate externally to determine its position, which makes it fully independent and undetectable.

Safran

The HRG Crystal™ is a hemispherical resonator gyro. It comprises a small number of parts in a silica half-shell, made of extremely pure glass and called a "resonator". It offers a virtually unlimited lifetime, a robust design that stands up to even the most extreme environments and a very high reliability (with mean time between failures exceeding 1 million hours) allowing a low total cost of ownership. What makes HRG Crystal™ a unique gyroscope is that it addresses standard to very high performances keeping the exact same size.

Safran has also developed an innovative inertial navigation module, the Onyx™, based on the HRG Crystal™ gyro. Safran's inertial navigation systems, whether civil or military, for land vehicles or ships, are now based on these Onyx™ inertial navigation core, which feature ITAR Free technologies and a modular design.