Stabilizing a camera mount using MEMS gyroscope and accelerometer

Abstract

This research attempts to develop a control approach for stabilizing a platform mounted on a base plate whose orientation can be arbitrarily modified. The end goal is to stabilize a camera for earth observation purposes. MEMS (micro-electromechanical system)-based gyroscopes and accelerometers are utilized as inertia references and are placed on the camera platform. The undesired drift of MEMS gyro data is eliminated by data confusion using a complementary filter. To design a stabilizing controller, first a mathematical model for the platform is developed and system uncertainties raised from the unmeasured states are shown to be bounded. Then this fact is utilized to propose an integral-based sliding mode control strategy to stabilize the platform in the inertia coordinate system under a wide variety of external angular rates and accelerations. Finally, the encouraging control performance is demonstrated experimentally.