Development and demonstration of INSTAR: inertially stabilized rifle
Diann Brei, James Vendlinski, Douglas K. Lindner, Huiyu Zhu, Chris LaVigna · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2003
While good marksmanship is key to the effectiveness of the infantry mission, all soldiers experience a decrease in accuracy due to combat stress that generates detrimental physiological effects. INSTAR is a tactical rifle designed to address these effects by decoupling unwanted shooter-induced disturbances from the barrel via an active suspension system. The critical design driver for this active suspension was the "complete" actuation system (actuation, driving electronics and power supply). This paper presents an overview to the INSTAR architectural design along with the challenging actuation requirements. The architectural development and experimental performance characterization of the selected Recurve piezoceramic actuation system is discussed in detail along with the specialized driving electronics needed for power conservation. Range-of-motion experiments were conducted on a full-scale, 1 DOF INSTAR prototype, demonstrating the necessary actuation system control authority for a successful active suspension.