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Experimental constrained optimal attitude control of a quadrotor subject to wind disturbances

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  • Robotics and Automation
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Abstract

The design and experimental verification of a Constrained Finite Time Optimal Controller (CFTOC) for attitude maneuvers of an Unmanned Quadrotor operating under severe wind conditions is the subject of this article. The quadrotor’s nonlinear dynamics are linearized in various operating points resulting in a set of piecewise affine models. The CFTO-controller is designed for set-point maneuvers taking into account the switching between the linear models and the state and actuation constraints. The control scheme is applied on experimental studies on a prototype quadrotor operating both in absence and under presence of forcible atmospheric disturbances. Extended experimental results indicate that the proposed control approach attenuates the effects of induced wind-gusts while performing accurate attitude set-point maneuvers.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Patras, GR 26500, Achaia, Greece

    Kostas Alexis & Anthony Tzes

  2. Department of Computer, Electrical and Space Engineering, Luleå University of Technology, SE-97187, Luleå, Sweden

    George Nikolakopoulos

Authors
  1. Kostas Alexis
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  2. George Nikolakopoulos
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  3. Anthony Tzes
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to George Nikolakopoulos.

Additional information

Recommended by Associate Editor Seul Jung under the direction of Editor Hyouk Ryeol Choi.

Kostas Alexis received his Ph.D. in 2011 from the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at the University of Patras (UPAT) in Greece. He has received the Diploma (MSc) of Electrical & Computer Engineering in 2007, from the same department. His research interests encompass fields such as unmanned aerial vehicles, automatic control, optimal, adaptive & robust control, robotics, wireless sensor networks, optimization theory and operational research. His scientific work includes more than 20 publications in Journals and Conferences in the afore-mentioned fields, while he has served as a reviewer in several conferences.

George Nikolakopoulos is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Automatic Control Systems at the Control Engineering Group at the Division of Systems and Interaction, Luleå University of technology, Sweden. His main research interests encompass fields, such as networked controlled systems, mechatronics, wireless sensor networks and actuators, AUV, UAVs, robotics, adaptive control and system identification. In the past he have been project manager in several R&D projects funded form EU, ESA, and the Greek National Ministry of Research. In year 2003, Prof. Nikolakopoulos has received the Information Societies Technologies (IST) Prize Award, for the best paper that promotes the scopes of the European IST (currently known as ICT). His published scientific work includes more than 100 published International Journals and Conferences in the fields of his interests. Moreover George has served as IPC member for ICIT’2011, CASE’2010, ETFA’ 2010, ECC’09, MEDŠ09, MIC’09, and MIC’10 international conferences, and have been Associate Editor and Reviewer of several International Journals and conferences.

Anthony Tzes is a Professor and the Head (2009 - 2011) of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the University of Patras (UPAT) in Greece. He is a graduate of UPAT (85) and has received his doctorate from the Ohio State University (90). From 1990 till 1999 he was with NYU Polytechnic. His research interests include networked controlled systems, MEMs, robotics, mechatronics, adaptive control, neural networks and fuzzy logic applications for intelligent transportation systems, adaptive fuzzy control, instrumentation embedded systems, system identification and signal processing. Prof. Tzes has been a committee member of the Advanced Traffic Management Systems of the ITS America organization, and has received research funding from various organizations including NASA, the National (US) Science Foundation, the European Union (FP6), and the European Space Agency (ESA). He has been the Chairman of IEEE’s Control Systems Society Greek Chapter, a member of the national (Greek) committee of the European Control Association (EUCA), member at several committees of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), and until recently the national representative to EU’s FP7’s thematic area’ Regions of Knowledge, Research Potential and Coherent Development of Policies’. He has served in various positions (Program Chairman (MIM’00), Organising Committee Chairman (ECC07), and as IPC-member at several international conferences. He has over ten years of experience as the director of the Instrumentation and Control Laboratory at NYU Polytechnic focusing on smart sensors and self-tuning systems. Concurrently, he served as the principal investigator of the Urban Intelligent Transportation Systems Center in New York, NY. While in Greece, he is the leader and principal investigator of the Applied Networked micro Mechatronics Systems group.

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Alexis, K., Nikolakopoulos, G. & Tzes, A. Experimental constrained optimal attitude control of a quadrotor subject to wind disturbances. Int. J. Control Autom. Syst. 12, 1289–1302 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-013-0290-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-013-0290-7

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