Hardware in the Loop Test on Air Bearing Trolley for Nano-satellites
- Paper number
IAC-06-C1.P.2.02
- Author
Mr. Warren Soh, Astronautic Technology (M) Sdn Bhd, Malaysia
- Year
2006
- Abstract
The attitude sensors and actuators of a satellite’s Attitude Determination and Control subsystem (ADCS) needs to be integrated to the Flight Control Software (FCS) and tested in real-time in the laboratory during the ADCS development cycle. This is commonly known as a Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) test. A HIL test comprising of a CMOS Horizon/Sun Sensor module and Reaction Wheel plus Gyroscope module daisy chained using a CAN bus to a control PC was implemented for ATSB’s future 3-axis stabilized nano-satellite. To determine the real-time response of the satellite with slewing capabilities about the pitch axis using the single Reaction Wheel plus Gyroscope module and the Sun Sensor, the ADCS components are mounted on an Air Bearing Trolley (ABT), a platform floating on a thin film of air, providing 2 Degrees of Freedom (DOF) translation and 1 DOF rotation about the axis normal to the platform. A single axis non-linear PID control and a single axis Discrete Kalman Filter in the FCS were designed using the ABT parameters in Matlab \& Simulink™ and implemented on the ABT using a scripting language called LUA™. This paper describes the controller and estimator, HIL setup, test and discusses the integrated ADCS components’ performance.
- Abstract document