Canfield Joint - Vibration Isolation System for High Precision Pointing

Our integrated Canfield Joint System and Vibration Isolation System CJS-VIS) is an improved actuation system for pointing and attitude control meeting the needs of various NASA applications. Some of these applications include: • Flywheel energy storage based spacecraft attitude control • Optical communication vibration control (including deep space applications) • Eliminating umbilical slip rings and/or anti-windup control features • Advanced space communication and cross linked networking • Space telescopes and imaging • Thruster directional control Thru the unification of a CJS parallel actuator system and Balcones Technologies proven VIS technology, BT's solution provides not only full hemispherical pointing/attitude control capability, but vibration isolation as well. Advantages of our team's CJS-VIS concept include inherent system redundancy through its three actuators; elimination of "gimbal lock;" and kinematics that preclude rotation about the z-axis which eliminates the need for slip rings or imposed rotational limits. Thru the addition of a third high bandwidth, fine pointing mirror, the "layered" VIS control approach is scalable to 1 kHz. In doing so, it represents a single system suitable for fine pointing within 1 µrad with less than 0.5 µrad standard deviation from 0.01 Hz thru 1 kHz. The CJS-VIS system represents a minimal component, single source, competitive solution meeting current and future needs for a variety of NASA programs.

The CJS-VIS offers a competitively priced alternative to 2-axis gimbal systems that has higher precision, higher accuracy, and higher reliability. All the satellite related applications NASA desires this system for (SOC pointing, solar array pointing, thruster orientation, attitude control systems, etc.), have parallels in the commercial and military satellite sectors making these the highest value initial target markets. In addition to these space-based systems, the CJS-VIS offers an attractive alternative for the military in ground based weapons pointing and surveillance systems. Positioning of radio frequency antennae and telescope components for the military and industrial users is also a high value target market to exploit. The commercial market has several applications that are not as high value but higher volume in some cases. These will be harder to penetrate initially, due to existing products that are well entrenched, and include; the medical industry where similar systems are used in automated surgical and imaging system; industrial manufacturing where automated multi-axis control systems are used in machining, fabrication, and integration systems; industrial motion simulators; and automated imaging systems used for aerial mapping, facial recognition, movies, and even Google's "street view" images. BT's intent is to focus on the highest value applications first and then target these lower value applications as the system cost is reduced.