Shape control of the stewart platform with elastic hinge utilizing artificial thermal expansion

Recently, structural requirements for observation accuracy of satellites' instruments become increasingly high. This research proposes a new pointing control system which uses Stewart platform with elastic hinge. As a linear actuator, artificial thermal expansion of rod is utilized. This system is highly reliable and enables precise control with 6 DOF. We designed the shape control system whose size is about 300mm on each side. By finite element analysis, it is shown that the shape control system can generate translational motion which is over 100μm in the horizontal direction and 20μm in the vertical direction without rotation. Finally, it is confirmed that relative error between analysis and experimental values is within 15% or less when the displacement is more than 100μm from experiments.