Adaptive control of a two axis gimbal system using modified error

In this article, a two axis gimbal system which can rotate over azimuth and elevation axes is considered. The dynamic parameters of the system are assumed to be unknown and it is desired that the line of sight of gimbal system tracks a reference input. Mechanical system is modeled in Adams-View software which simulates the exact behavior of gimbal system. The controller design is based on inverse dynamics approach which results in a non-SPR error model. To overcome the problem of non-SPR error model, an adaptive controller with modified error structure for updating the controller parameters is implemented. Simulation results on the gimbal system show superior performance of controller design in comparison to a classical PD controller.