Patent ID: 7787582

Claim:
A control unit comprising: a housing; a processor situated in the housing; at least one inertial sensor situated in the housing; and a serial synchronous interface for providing a data transmission; wherein the data transmission is between the processor and the at least one inertial sensor and is in digital form, and wherein the data transmission is configured in such a way that transmitted data has at least one error bit and at least one status bit, the at least one error bit enabling detection and identification of data transmission errors, and the at least one status bit enabling recognition of an operating state of the at least one inertial sensor, wherein the data transmission is configured for at least one of the following: (i) to be bidirectional, (ii) triggering a sensor test, (iii) triggering a sensor-internal offset regulation of the at least one inertial sensor, (iv) triggering a switch-over from one operating state to another operating state of the at least one inertial sensor, wherein four lines are provided for the data transmission, one of the lines being for selecting the at least one inertial sensor, wherein the at least one inertial sensor has a multi-channel design, and wherein the status bit indicates one of (i) a running sensor test, (ii) an offset regulation mode, and (iii) an initialization phase.