Abstract
This paper presents a novel attitude control device which is called three dimensional reaction wheel (3DRW). 3DRW consists of only one levitated spherical mass which can rotate around arbitrary axes. This leads to the reduction of the weight and volume of the device as compared to existing reaction wheel. Furthermore, this device has no mechanical contact between rotor and stator, so the failure caused by the mechanical contact would be reduced. In this paper, the results of the analysis and experiment on the dynamics and control of 3DRW are shown. In the experiments of the rotation control, the air bearing system is used. Using this device, the characteristics of rotation of the spherical mass are obtained. To verify the feasibility of the concept of 3DRW, the experiments of angular velocity feedback control are carried out. The results of experiments are applied to the numerical simulation of the attitude control for microsatellites, and the feasibility of 3DRW is verified.
