System Performance of an Inertially Stabilized Gimbal Platform with Friction, Resonance, and Vibration Effects

Abstract

The research work evaluates the quality of the sensor to perform measurements and documents its effects on the performance of the system. It also evaluates if this performance changes due to the environments and other system parameters. These environments and parameters include vibration, system friction, structural resonance, and dynamic system input. The analysis is done by modeling a gimbal camera system that requires angular measurements from inertial sensors and gyros for stabilization. Overall, modeling includes models for four different types of gyros, the gimbal camera system, the drive motor, the motor rate control system, and the angle position control system. Models for friction, structural resonance, and vibration are analyzed, respectively. The system is simulated, for an ideal system, and then includes the more realistic environmental and system parameters. These simulations are run with each of the four types of gyros. The performance analysis depicts that for the ideal system; increasing gyro quality provides better system performance. However, when environmental and system parameters are introduced, this is no longer the case. There are even cases when lower quality sensors provide better performance than higher quality sensors.