Low-cost active anti-gravity suspension system

Recently, SatCon Technology Corporation has successfully demonstrated a novel anti-gravity suspension for NASA Langley. This approach consists of a passive gravity-unload mechanism enhanced with an active inertia-controller. The passive gravity-unload is achieved by supporting the suspended body with a counterbalanced cable system. The suspension is unique because it has essentially zero stiffness and zero damping relative to conventional approaches. The effect of suspension stiffness on the dynamics of the suspended article is essentially eliminated. During this phase, a hardware demonstration of this concept providing a vertical anti-gravity suspension using low-cost, off-the-shelf components was developed. The results achieved are compared with the capabilities of available mechanical suspensions systems to attain zero-gravity environments. Finally, a discussion is provided on extending this concept to three dimensions using an actively-controlled translational table.