Earth self-orienting apparatus

摘要

A rotor mounting a sensor to be inserted into the earth is rotatably mounted within and locked to a cylindrical housing. The latter may be dropped to the earth and may come to rest in any orientation. When at rest, the rotor is unlocked and a drive mechanism rotates the rotor with respect to the housing. Gravity causes a ball in a tortuous path in the rotor to traverse the path and to drop into one of a plurality of annularly spaced recesses in the housing when the rotor reaches a desired orientation. With the ball in place in a recess, a wedge surface on the rotor wedges against a portion of the ball extending from the recess and this stops the rotor-in the desired orientation.