Pivot-Only Azimuthal Control and Attitude Estimation of Balloon-borne Payloads
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arXiv
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| Hauptverfasser: | , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| author | Voyer, Philippe Tartakovsky, Simon Benton, Steven J. Jones, William C. |
| author_facet | Voyer, Philippe Tartakovsky, Simon Benton, Steven J. Jones, William C. |
| contents | This paper presents an attitude estimation and yaw-rate control framework for balloon-borne payloads using pivot-only actuation, motivated by the Taurus experiment. Taurus is a long-duration balloon instrument designed for rapid azimuthal scanning at approximately 30 deg/s using a motorized pivot at the flight-train connection, without a reaction wheel. We model the gondola as a rigid body subject to realistic disturbances and sensing limitations, and implement a Multiplicative Extended Kalman Filter (MEKF) that estimates attitude and gyroscope bias by fusing inertial and vector-camera measurements. A simple PI controller uses the estimated states to regulate yaw rate. Numerical simulations incorporating representative disturbance and measurement noise levels are used to evaluate closed-loop control performance and MEKF behavior under flight-like conditions. Experimental tests on the Taurus gondola validate the pivot-only approach, demonstrating stable high-rate tracking under realistic hardware constraints. The close agreement between simulation and experiment indicates that the simplified rigid-body model captures the dominant dynamics relevant for controller design and integrated estimation-and-control development. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_11987 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Pivot-Only Azimuthal Control and Attitude Estimation of Balloon-borne Payloads Voyer, Philippe Tartakovsky, Simon Benton, Steven J. Jones, William C. Systems and Control Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics This paper presents an attitude estimation and yaw-rate control framework for balloon-borne payloads using pivot-only actuation, motivated by the Taurus experiment. Taurus is a long-duration balloon instrument designed for rapid azimuthal scanning at approximately 30 deg/s using a motorized pivot at the flight-train connection, without a reaction wheel. We model the gondola as a rigid body subject to realistic disturbances and sensing limitations, and implement a Multiplicative Extended Kalman Filter (MEKF) that estimates attitude and gyroscope bias by fusing inertial and vector-camera measurements. A simple PI controller uses the estimated states to regulate yaw rate. Numerical simulations incorporating representative disturbance and measurement noise levels are used to evaluate closed-loop control performance and MEKF behavior under flight-like conditions. Experimental tests on the Taurus gondola validate the pivot-only approach, demonstrating stable high-rate tracking under realistic hardware constraints. The close agreement between simulation and experiment indicates that the simplified rigid-body model captures the dominant dynamics relevant for controller design and integrated estimation-and-control development. |
| title | Pivot-Only Azimuthal Control and Attitude Estimation of Balloon-borne Payloads |
| topic | Systems and Control Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.11987 |