Active Gimbal

Using an inertial measurement unit (IMU) to sense the movements of the camera, the controller then stabilizes the camera by sending commands to the actuators to counter the change in pitch and roll.

The phone was modeled as a thin rectangular plate for roll and a point mass for with a radius of the phone.

I then developed a PD control to critically damp the movements with a fast reaction time (3Hz). I then used an Arduino Uno with a motor shield to communicate with the motors, to send out the corresponding PWM values based on my controller.

Below is the response curve plotted in MATLAB based on the readouts from the motors.

I was also able to then synchronize the motion of the gimbal system to track an oscillatory motion caused by a spring mass system.

This project was a personal favorite of mine because of how much I enjoyed seeing the stabilized footage, which made it seem as if the phone was floating in space.