Nutation and roll error angle correction means
AssigneeHughes Aircraft Company
InventorDonald G. Johansen
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A system for controlling the attitude of a vehicle along three-axes is provided with a simple momentum wheel of one degree of freedom and several jets so as to enable correction of attitude error and dampen nutation action of the vehicle. The jets are controlled by means of a two channel control circuit terminating in logic gates that select the particular jet required to make the error correction. One of the channels is responsive to the polarity or sign of a voltage provided as input thereto whereas the other channel is responsive to threshold voltage levels provided to it, both channels being responsive to inputs from a low pass filter. The threshold voltage levels are adjusted by feedback correction paths provided in that particular portion of the control circuit.
Claims26
An attitude control system for providing multiple axes control to a vehicle, comprising in combination:
- a plurality of jet thrustors spaced from each other at predetermined locations at the outer periphery of the vehicle;
- an electronic control circuit including shift registers and a logic network connected to said jet thrustors for periodically imparting activation of any of the thrustors so as to correct offset of the vehicle attitude with respect to a predetermined direction;
- and
- a rotatable momentum wheel within said vehicle having a single degree of freedom, said wheel being independent in its rotational action of the attitude of the vehicle, said electronic control circuit being non-responsive to rotational action of said wheel.
A method for providing multiple axes vehicle control employing a plurality of jet thrustors, a momentum wheel, and an electronic control circuit which includes shift registers and a logic network, comprising in combination the steps of:
- introducing time delay into commands by storing and shifting limited signal levels through said electronic control circuit to fire any of the jet thrustors for nulling nutation errors in said vehicle;
- and
- precessing the vehicle and adjusting wheel momentum vectors for nulling the pointing error of the vehicle.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.