Characterisation of a gimbal's response when attached to a drone to roll, pitch and yaw movements of a drone

With the increased capability of drones, comes the increased need for the ability to attach level sensitive packages and fly whilst these packages remain in a horizontal and leveled position. This thesis looks into the characteristic response of a horizontal and leveling gimbal device when used with a sensor suite consisting of two pairs of vector magnetometers. The project centres on the idea of using the gimbal to keep a sensor suite of vector magnetometers leveled, while connected to a low flying drone for meteorite detection. However, the scope of this device goes beyond that, looking into its applications in UXO detection and forensic geoscience. The project incorporates testing methods with the goal of analysing and commenting on the characteristic responses of a gimbal. To accomplish this, a mechanical lever apparatus was constructed to simulate a step input change of the drone's roll movement for the reason of testing a gimbal's response. The response of the gimbal was captured using a high speed camera and then analysed over a sequence of frames using image processing software. The effect of the amplitude of the input angle change and added centralised mass onto the gimbal camera mount are explored through the comparison of the gimbal response's Overshoot , Settling Time (Tˢ), and Steady State Error (SSE) during testing.