Essential ingredients for robust control are the ability to cope with different types of system behavior following modeling imperfections and the ability to assure a certain performance level. In this paper, we propose to use an actuator fault-tolerant control law to govern, during experiments, the stabilization of a bicycle robot with an inertial wheel in order to take into account unmodeled uncertainty introduced by using a linearized model in an LQR fashion. Our proposal is illustrated by signal plots and the values of performance indices obtained from a set of experiments.

The paper presents a novel autotuning approach for finding locally-best parameters of controllers on board of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The controller tuning is performed fully autonomously during flight on the basis of predefined ranges of controller parameters. Required controller properties may be simply interpreted by a cost function, which is involved in the optimization process. For example, the sum of absolute values of the tracking error samples or performance indices, including weighed functions of control signal samples, can be penalized to achieve very precise position control, if required. The proposed method relies on an optimization procedure using Fibonacci-search technique fitted into bootstrap sequences, enabling one to obtain a global minimizer for a unimodal cost function. The approach is characterized by low computational complexity and does not require any UAV dynamics model (just periodical measurements from basic onboard sensors) to obtain proper tuning of a controller. In addition to the theoretical background of the method, an experimental verification in real-world outdoor conditions is provided. The experiments have demonstrated a high robustness of the method to in-environment disturbances, such as wind, and its easy deployability.

In this paper, the Jacobian-linearization-and feedback-linearization-based techniques of obtaining linearized model approaches are combined with a family of robust LQR control laws to identify the pairing which results in superior control performance of the bicycle robot, despite uncertainty and constraints, what is the main contribution of the paper. The control performance is analyzed using various indices, related, e.g. to energy consumption of the considered laws, with the experiments conducted on a real bicycle robot. As a result, the easily-implementable controller is obtained, which requires only to perform a set of off-line computations with a single additional parameter in comparison with a standard linear-quadratic controller, to obtain a state-feedback vector, which, when implemented to the control system, ensures proper regulation of the output signal of the plant, despite uncertainty or possible actuator failures, obtaining energy-efficient control law.

The paper presents a novel description of the interplay between the windup phenomenon and directional change in controls for multivariable systems (including plants with an uneven number of inputs and outputs), usually omitted in the literature. The paper also proposes a new classification of anti-windup compensators with respect to the method of generating the constrained control signal.

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