Beam Train Flexible Structure Control for Airborne/Space-Based Systems

"The increasing demands for higher performance optical acquisition, tracking, and pointing (ATP) systems, combined with cost pressures requiring lighter payloads, indicates a need for a new approach to slewing and structural control. The use of lighterweight structures exacerbates the interaction of slew maneuvers and acoustic disturbances with the system's flexible modes, causing errors in the alignment and shape of the optical components that result in degraded optical performance. Such gimbaledsystems will require control systems that can accommodate the time-varying disturbances, rigid-body, and flexible dynamics resulting from the changing geometry as the payload is slewed.To address these issues, we will show the feasibility of (Phase I) and demonstrate (Phase II) an adaptive control design approach that works during operation to autonomously identify the time-varying gimbaled optical system dynamics affecting the slewingbandwidth, then design feedback control laws to achieve predefined performance and stability criteria. Our technical approach is based on our Frequency Domain Expert (FDE) control algorithm, which has been demonstrated on the International Space Station(ISS) as part of the Middeck Active Control Experiment (MACE-II). The proposed technology development has the potential to significantly enhance the performance of large, gimbaled optics such as ABL and SBL. The ability of the new, autonomous control design p