Robust Attitude Regulation of a 3-DOF Helicopter Benchmark: Theory and Experiments

This paper presents the design and experimental results of the robust attitude regulation for a 3-DOF Quanser helicopter benchmark. The control objective is to asymptotically track the desired elevation and pitch reference signals generated by an exogenous system, while keeping all the closed-loop states bounded, even if there exist unknown uncertainties. Based on the output-regulation theory and signal compensation technique, a new design method of state feedback robust controller is proposed. This method permits the existence of unknown uncertainties and external disturbances in both the helicopter and the exosystem. Only knowledge about the bounds of these uncertainties is required. The experimental results demonstrate the desired performance of the proposed controller implemented on the Quanser helicopter.