Orientation of radio-telescope secondary mirror via parallel platform

Abstract

In this work a parallel manipulator (Stewart platform) is used to align and maintain the position of the secondary mirror of a radio-telescope. The six degree of freedom platform gives the significant advantage to reach the maximum performance for the positioning task. This system uses six lineal actuators with changeable lengths to obtain the desired position. The filtered version of sliding mode algorithm is used to control and orient the system in presence of unmodelled dynamics and perturbations. It provides chattering effect reduction and improving of the performance of the system.