Abstract: A measuring apparatus and method for calculating height and weight of human subjects in one step. A scale having a weight sensor is provided to sense the weight of a subject standing thereon. A sonar head is positioned stationary a predetermined distance above the scale sufficient to permit a subject to stand upright on the scale and below the sonar head. The sonar head has a sound wave emitter and a plurality of sound wave receptors. A Digital Signal Processing circuit(DSP) is connected to the sonar head and is activated when the operator initiates a measurement. The data processing circuit is controlled by a software to calculate the weight and height of the subject. The apparatus and method also provides additional data on the subject, such as the body surface area, BA, body mass index BMI, percentiles height and weight. The (DSP) circuit produces a short burst of sound waves that travel downwards, hit the target (patient's head) and return towards the sonar head.

Abstract: A digital control system is provided for controlling the indexing of the focussed beam of an ultrasonic transducer over a sloped or curved surface of a workpiece being inspected for flaws. To index the transducer to follow a sloped surface on the workpiece the angle of the sloped surface in half degree incrementation is setup and used to read out the sine and cosine functions from a memory. At the index time of a scan each of these functions is used to pass a portion of a preset number of clock pulses to provide vertical and horizontal clock pulses which respectively increment stepping motors to reposition the transducer along the sloped surface. To index the transducer to follow a curved surface on the workpiece, the radius of the circumferential path along which the transducer is to be moved is setup and used to help define when the transducer has moved along a chord of a half degree angle.