Industry Patents

The invention relates to a suspension system designed for use with optical devices, such as video cameras. The camera suspension unit includes a platform, outer and middle frames, with the orthogonal intersecting axes of rotation at the midpoint of the unit, rotating drives to rotate the unit about the X, Y and Z axes all controlled by a control unit. The middle frame of the suspension unit is designed as a mechanical parallelogram, having a movable jointed foot, a piston-rod and two cranks, as well as two mechanical links, all of which have an axis of rotation parallel to the middle frame axis of rotation, which is parallel to the Y axis. The outer end of each mechanical link is fastened to a crank while the inner end is fastened to the frame. The inner ends are fastened in a rotatable manner, allowing for the rotation about an axis parallel to the axes of rotation of the cranks. The outer frame of the suspension unit, the foot of the parallelogram, two mobile mechanical links and the cranks, are all joined together, to form two parallelograms. The platform is rotatably fastened to the middle frame or parallelogram on at least one end with a piston-rod, and the axis of rotation of the platform is perpendicular to the axes of rotation of the piston-rod in relation to the cranks. The axis of rotation of the platform and cranks intersect.