A Testbed for Attitude Control Using Cold Gas Thrusters
Julien Brousseau, Rachel Maynard, Anil V. Singaraju, Hanz Richter · 2006
A portable testbed is designed and built to demonstrate attitude control using cold gas thrusters. The main components are a high-pressure Nitrogen tank, solenoid valves, nozzles and a data acquisition and control interface. The device is small enough to be operated on a desktop, facilitating classroom demonstrations. The device can be commanded from a laptop computer having the necessary interfacing software. A rotary encoder provides angular position information for use in model generation and calibration or in feedback control evaluations. Only bang-bang, pulse-width modulation and similar control strategies are possible to be implemented in this system due to the on/off nature of thruster operation. The paper describes the design and construction of the platform, the procedures followed to estimate key dynamic parameters and includes a sample run using a time-fuel optimal control law based on a nominal double integrator plant.