Control and design of the spherical pointing motor

A miniature pan-tilt actuator, the spherical pointing motor (SPM) has been built. The SPM is an absolute positioning device, designed to orient a small camera sensor in two degrees-of-rotational-freedom. It is 4 cm*5 cm*6 cm and weighs 160 g. The operating principle of the SPM is to orient a permanent magnet to the magnetic field induced by three orthogonal coils by applying the appropriate ratio of currents to the coils. The open-loop control and design of the SPM are described. Physical characteristics and velocity measurements of the prototype are reported. The SPM is modeled with a simple second order system. Without control, it oscillates substantially when a single impulse is applied. By applying a second impulse without feedback, the oscillation can be reduced by as much as a factor of ten.>