Development and control of a 3-axis motion simulator for satellite ADCS hardware-in-the-loop simulation

In this paper, the development and control of a 3-axis motion simulator are described. The simulator is used to test and calibrate satellite attitude determination and control system (ADCS) by means of hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HILS) technique. The motion simulator actuators are permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) drives. A mathematical model of the simulator is derived and an adaptive nonlinear tracking control law is developed based on Lyapunov stability theory. Furthermore, by analyzing HILS dynamics and using simplified modeling technique, the basic dynamics requirement of the simulator is derived. The simulation and experimental results are presented to verify the successful design of the simulator and efficacy of the proposed control system.