Optoelectronic absolute position encoder with an in-line gray code controlling vehicle acceleration

摘要

An optoelectronic encoder senses theabsolute position of an accelerator pedal or lever in a battery powered vehicle and provides a linear or nonlinear control voltage in response thereto. The Gray code is fabricated on an encoder slide in an in-line arrangement which minimizes decoding errors due to stray light and skew within the encoder. In the preferred embodiment, the Gray coded output from the encoder is converted to binary, which is then converted into analog form and applied to a linear or nonlinear function generator circuit. The nonlinear function generator circuit comprises parallel-coupled amplifier stages, the outputs of which are selectively clamped depending on the amplitude of the input signal from digital-to-analog converter.