Stabilizing Optics, Work Surfaces, Instruments with Gyroscopes / 6-DOF Hexapods 
Unstable work surfaces are stabilized using a gyroscope, controller, and a 6-Axis Hexapod mechanism.
There are many optics and metrology-related applications which require a stable work surface in an unstable environment, whether that environment is vibrating, in an aircraft, on a vessel at sea, or elsewhere. Under normal conditions, the work surface is subject to these environmental disturbances. Hexapod motion platforms provide a good basis to compensate for motion in 6 degrees of freedom. In previous articles, the use for these parallel kinematic mechanisms has been explained in camera quality testing applications and for improving image stabilization algorithms.

In a recent test, we used a gyroscope to provide feedback to a hexapod controller in order to compensate for multi-degree-of-freedom disturbances and to maintain a horizontal top plate during the process. PI’s H-811 miniature hexapod with a gyroscope was mounted on PI’s H-840 hexapod. The H-840 is controlled by PI’s C-887.52 controller’s integrated waveform generator. A Matlab program reads the output from the gyroscope on the H-811 platform and sends commands countering the H-840 motions to the H-811 controller.