Inertial stabilization systems are designed to maintain the angular orientation of an optical system or other device in inertial space. Applications include surveillance, target tracking, flight control, weapon pointing, navigation, communication and others. Typically, some variation of a closed loop control system is employed which uses feedback from a gyro. The object of this paper is to consider the potential benefits and some approaches to adaptive control algorithms.

Ideally, an adaptive control system would adjust itself to achieve "optimal performance" with respect to some criteria in the presence of changing plant characteristics, changing noise characteristics and a changing disturbance environment. Potentially, such a design could provide robust control for a variety of system configurations, mission conditions and applications resulting in significant reductions in both development and production costs as well as improved performance.

First, the general stabilization problem and some conventional control system designs are briefly reviewed. Then a variety of adaptive techniques are surveyed. Finally, the current status and results of a joint research project between Texas Instruments and the University of Texas at Arlington whose goal is to develop an adaptive stabilization control system is discussed.

Date Published: 1 September 1990
PDF
Proc. SPIE 1304, Acquisition, Tracking, and Pointing IV, (1 September 1990); doi: 10.1117/12.2322210

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1304:
Acquisition, Tracking, and Pointing IV
Sankaran Gowrinathan, Editor(s)