On the control of vibratory MEMS gyroscopes

This paper addresses the control issue of vibratory MEMS-based gyroscopes. This study considers a gyroscope that can be modeled by an inner mass attached to an outer mass by four springs and four dampers. The outer mass itself is attached to the rotating frame by an equal number of springs and dampers. In order to measure the angular rate of the rotating frame, a driving force is applied to the inner mass and the Coriolis force is sensed along the y-direction associated with the outer mass. Due to micro-fabrication imperfections, including anisoelasticity and damping effects, both gyroscopes do not allow accurate measurements, and therefore, it becomes necessary to devise feedback controllers to reduce the effects of such imperfections. Given an ideal gyroscope that meets certain performance specifications, a feedback control strategy is synthesized to reduce the error dynamics between the actual and ideal gyroscopes. For a dual-mass gyroscope, it is demonstrated that the error dynamics are remarkably decreased with the application of four actuators applied to both masses in the x and y directions. It is also shown that it is possible to reduce the error dynamics with only two actuators applied to the outer mass only. Simulation results are presented to prove the efficiency of the proposed control design.