Research ArticleDual-rate-loop control based on disturbance observer of angular acceleration for a three-axis aerial inertially stabilized platform

•Dual-rate-loop control based on DOB of angular acceleration is proposed.•Encoder and rate gyro are employed to constitute the inner/outer rate loop, respectively.•A DOB based on angular acceleration is proposed in stabilization loop.•Information fusion of Kalman filter in combination with tracking-differentiator are conducted in DOB.•The methods are theoretically analyzed and experimentally validated.

This paper presents a dual-rate-loop control method based on disturbance observer (DOB) of angular acceleration for a three-axis ISP for aerial remote sensing applications, by which the control accuracy and stabilization of ISP are improved obviously. In stabilization loop of ISP, a dual-rate-loop strategy is designed through constituting inner rate loop and the outer rate loop, by which the capability of disturbance rejection is advanced. Further, a DOB-based on angular acceleration is proposed to attenuate the influences of the main disturbances on stabilization accuracy. Particularly, an information fusion method is suggested to obtain accurate angular acceleration in DOB design, which is the key for the disturbance compensation. The proposed methods are theoretically analyzed and experimentally validated to illustrate the effectiveness.