A calibration method for rotary optical encoder temperature error in a rotational inertial navigation system

Abstract A rotary optical encoder is an important component in a rotational inertial navigation system (RINS). It is used to form a closed-loop motor control system and calculate the system attitude. The system performance will be affected by the encoder’s error. Ín addition to the installation errors, the working temperature variants can lead to encoder error. Therefore, in this paper we propose a method to calibrate and compensate the temperature errors of rotary optical encoders. First, an independent testing mechanism with position limitation and a rotatable platform is designed and produced to verify the temperature influence on encoders. Then, the temperature error of the rotary optical encoder used in RINS is calculated by a gyroscope whose sensitive axis is parallel to the same motor axis. The method is verified by a self-researched single-axis RINS. According to the experimental results, the measurement accuracy is increased by more than 47.9% compared to the traditional method.