Composite Control for Gimbal Systems With Multiple Disturbances: Analysis, Design, and Experiment

The proportional-integral (PI) controller has proven to be a remarkably effective control strategy in the servo field. However, it is difficult for PI to handle the problem of multiple disturbances degrading the velocity-tracking capability of the gimbal system in the control moment gyro (CMG). In this article, we propose a solution to this problem while preserving the advantages of PI from an engineering standpoint. Starting from the refined disturbance analysis based on a 5 Nms CMG gimbal system experimental tests, multiple disturbances of the gimbal system can be classified according to frequency distribution in terms of 0 ∼ 5 and 128 Hz. Subsequently, under the composite hierarchical anti-disturbance control frame, a peak filter and a disturbance observer addition improve the anti-disturbance capability of the PI-based gimbal system at the frequencies of 0 ∼ 5 and 128 Hz. Notably, the proposed method has a relatively low order, which is appropriate for the processing power limit. Finally, the experimental results reveal that compared to three effective control schemes (PI, extended state observer-based composite controller, and PI-resonant controller), the proposed method can strikingly enhance the anti-disturbance ability and velocity-tracking performance of the gimbal system.