Fast Model Predictive Control of the Nadir Singularity in Electro-Optic Systems

Abstract

Civilian airborne directed-countermeasure electro-optic systems require the simplest, most affordable, sightline pointing and stabilization system: a two-axis gimbal. Two-axis gimbal tracking and jamming effectiveness degrades as the line of sight approaches the outer gimbal axis: the gimbal lock, keyhole, or nadir singularity condition. Our novel implementation of fast model predictive control in the position loop minimizes the tracking error by predicting the singularity. A second novel algorithm predicts the future set-point trajectory. This predictive controller yields near-optimal tracking performance without a priori slew-rate knowledge.