I'm curious if the response time from the NXT Acceleration / Tilt Sensor or NXT Gyro Sensor (not sure which is more applicable) to counter act the forward / backward and front to back movement of a typical steadicam (http://www.steadicam.com/handheldmerlin.html) for a light weight video camera. The goal is to use linear actuators to counter act the movements of the camera on top of a universal joint as I move around corners and up and down stairs. I expect that the majority of the finished device will be of lego components.
Any thoughts or better does someone have the time and parts to make one?

Cheer

You wouldn't need motors or NXTs to do this, really. You could do it with 3-D hinge and a counter weight, the way Steadicam do it

However, if you want to do this with motors and an NXT, you will need as many Gyros as axes you want to keep track of. Gyros are much more suited for this than accelerometers, since they will tell you how fast you are rotating about a certain axis. They are also very fast. An accelerometer is -not- a tilt meter. The Mindsensors sensor does provide information about the current tilt position, though. However, it cannot (directly) tell you how fast you are rotating about a specific axis, you would need to calculate that yourself.

So if you are on a tight budget but are a confident programmer, you could use the Mindsensors Accelerometer: [LINK] or if you want to make it with gyros and you have a bit of money to spare, you can use 3 of these: [LINK].

Linear actuators are quite slow and will not be able to counter act movement very quickly, I think. You could speed it up by using PF Medium motors, they turn about 2.5 times faster than an NXT motor.

Regards,
Xander