The goal of this lab is to control the response of a gyroscope to a voltage step input under differing axes of freedom, determined by which DOFs are constrained, with different position outputs measured. For each experiment, the open-loop response of the gyroscope was first measured and used to create a model representing the response. Once the model was validated, a controller was designed around it before being tested on the actual gyroscope.

The ideal design of controller implementation in this experiment is set to contain these qualities: (1) Robustness; (2) Overshoot is limited within 25%; (3) No steady state error; (4) Disturbance rejection.

Tuning the controller gains to meet the requirements of the experiment consists of making small adjustments to each gain, prioritizing reducing steady-state error and reducing overshoot while reducing the rise time if possible. Since each gain affects the controller differently, this is an iterative process performed until the changes lead to diminishing returns.