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Introduction
What is the project?
The project we developed by us is "Angle measurement system for three axis
gimbal nanosatellite testbench", and it is developed as a part of the course II1305 "Project in Information and Communication Technology".
Our project advisor is Nickolay Ivchenko (nickolay@kth.se), Space and Plasma Physics, EECS.
The objective of the project is to build a setup for measurement of the orientation of the gimbal testbench. The testbench is being developed as a part of an MSc thesis, to be used for testing the ADCS ( Attitude determination and control system ) of a free-flying payload, designed and built in the framework of the REXUS program ( Rocket EXperiments for University Students, see http://rexusbexus.net/ ). Having a system for recording the three rotation angles is critical both for the characterization of the testbench itself, as well as for the actual ADCS testing.
This involves working both with software and hardware.
One interesting aspect of finding the solution is that not only should it give the correct results, it must not disturb the gimbal itself - and this is quite tricky.
What are the main tasks?
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Identifying different methods for measuring the angular position of three gimbal frames
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Making a tradeoff between accuracy, sampling rate, complexity, level of disturbance to the gimbal, and cost.
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Deciding on a viable solution
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Finally: building and evaluating the system
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