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T. Riel, R. Saathof, A. Katalenic, G. Schitter:
"Tracking Performance Analysis and Control of a Small Robotic Telescope System";
Poster: Advanced Maui Optical Space Surveillance Technologies Conference (AMOS) 2016, Wailea, Hawaii (USA); 09-20-2016 - 09-23-2016; in: "AMOS 2016 Proceedings", (2016), 8 pages.

This paper analyses the achievable precision of an equatorially mounted telescope system with two direct-drive permanent magnet synchronous motors. The analysis is done using a combination of physical system modeling and dynamic error budgeting. The parameters of the physical system are obtained by system identification and parameter estimation for various telescope positions. Using this system model, the limiting performance of the telescope system is simulated. Based on the identification data, a feedback controller is designed and implemented for the telescope system. The performance is verified experimentally by measurements recorded at tracking speeds of up to 5 °/s and several positions. The experimental results reveal a maximal servo tracking error of 1.3 arcseconds for the dec.-axis and 0.5 arcseconds for the r.a.-axis, which occurs at the maximal speed of 5 °/s. The experimental results are in good agreement with the simulation results, verifying the proposed method. This method provides a powerful tool to compare various systems by simulation as well as to optimize the performance of robotic telescope systems for tracking of NEOs to improve space situation awareness.