Four-axis gimbal system application based on gimbal self-adaptation adjustment

Gimbal lock is a common physical phenomenon in the gimbal system. As for the three-axis gimbal system, gimbal lock could not be avoided when two axes are driven into being collinear with each other. As a result, it will lead to the loss of one degree of rotational freedom. This paper analyses the limitation of three-axis gimbal system in flight attitude motion simulation and introduces a new system of four-axis gimbal set, which contains a redundant forth axis. And then, a kind of gimbal angle algorithm based on base gimbal self-adaptation adjustment was presented to successfully solve the running angles of the four gimbals. According to theoretical analysis and MATLAB simulation result, this application scheme could drive four-axis gimbal system to simulate wide attitude motion of the flight vehicle rather than suffering singularity.