Mini Project Report

on

Sliding Mode Control of Powered Orthosis

submitted by
BISWAJIT DEBNATH
(M140201EE)

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the award of the degree of

Master of Technology
in
Electrical Engineering
(Instrumentation and Control Systems)

Under the guidance of

Dr. S.J. Mija

Department of Electrical Engineering

National Institute of Technology, Calicut

Calicut
Kerala 673 601
May 2015

Contents
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . .
1.2 LITERATURE SURVEY . . . . .
1.3 OBJECTIVES . . . . . . . . . .
1.4 ORGANIZATION OF REPORT

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4
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2 LAB HELICOPTER SYSTEM

2.1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2 SYSTEM MODELLING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.3 SUMMARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 CONTROLLER DESIGN
3.1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2 NOMINAL CONTROLLER DESIGN .
3.3 ROBUST COMPENSATOR DESIGN
3.4 SUMMARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . .
4.2 RESULTS . . . . . . . . . . .
4.3 DISCUSSION . . . . . . . . .
4.4 SUMMARY . . . . . . . . . .

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5 CONCLUSIONS

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REFERENCES

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List of Figures
1.1

Boeing HC-1B Chinook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2.1

Lab Helicopter system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3.1
3.2
3.3

Control Block Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Control Block Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Control Block Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
4.6

Elevation Response with State F/B Controller . . . . . . . . .

Travel Response with State F/B Controller . . . . . . . . . . .
Elevation Tracking for Square wave Ref Input w/o disturbance
Travel Tracking for Square wave ref Input w/o disturbance . .
Elevation Response for square wave ref.input with disturbance
Travel Response for square wave ref. input with disturbance .

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Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1

INTRODUCTION

Helicopters, either man controlled or an autonomous unmanned vehicle system have

gained much attention these days due to their versatile functions like, remote areal exploration, remote sensing, imaging and surveillance etc. Considerable attention has been
attracted to the analysis and control of helicopters due to their potential military and
civil applications as well as scientific significance.
The attitude and position controller is an important part of a helicopter and its design
problem attracts much attention of the researchers. High levels of agility, manoeuvrability,
and the capability of operating in degraded visual environments and adverse weather
conditions are the current trends of helicopter control design. Helicopter flight control
systems should make these performance requirements achievable by improving tracking
performance and disturbance rejection capabilities. Robustness is one of the critical issues,
which must be considered in the control system design for high-performance autonomous
helicopter. In general, most control designs are based on linearised helicopter dynamics
using the widely adopted concept of stability derivatives. However, in recent years there
is considerable research related to helicopter flight control based on non-linear dynamic
representations.
The system considered in this report is a lab helicopter with 3-degrees of freedom. The
system has similar dynamics with the Boeing Chinook HC-1B Tandem helicopters, which
are used for rescue operations in military.
Figure 1.1: Boeing HC-1B Chinook

A linear time-invariant robust control design is mentioned here, which deals with the position control problem under aggressive manoeuvres and time-varying wind disturbances.
This controller consists of two parts, a nominal state feedback controller and a robust
compensator. The nominal part is applied to obtain desired tracking for the nominal
linear system while the robust compensator is added to restrain the effects of parameter perturbations, non-linear uncertainties and external disturbances because of the wind
gusts. The nominal dynamical performances can be specified by the optimal controller
and the robust compensator can restrain the effects of uncertainties.
The attitude control problems involving the elevation and pitch angles were investigated
for the 3-DOF helicopter and full state feedback control schemes were applied. However,
in position control problems, the elevation and travel angles are required to track their
desired reference values and the pitch angle is considered as the inner dynamics. Because
of MIMO system with serious inter-axis couplings, a full state feedback control method
can not be used. Since some states cannot be measured directly, these states are estimated
by indirectly by investigating pitch angle.

1.2

LITERATURE SURVEY

Many approaches have been done to reduce the effects of the wind gusts. The influences
of external wind were measured by sensors of the wind velocity and a feedforward controller was applied. Earlier to counter the effects of the wind disturbances, the wind gust
velocity is measured with a rotary vane anemometer, and an optimal control approach
was applied. Furthermore, it was shown that the wind disturbances could be addressed
without the measuring equipments of the wind velocity and could be reduced by the adaptive output regulation method or the disturbance observation control technique. Wind
gusts were considered as uncertainties in and an active disturbance rejection controller
was designed to restrain the effects of the wind gusts. Many previous experimental works
focused on the stabilization of the helicopters in hovering or near hovering conditions in
the presence of the persistent wind gusts with a fixed velocity, while further investigation to obtain better tracking performances for aggressive manoeuvres under time-varying
wind disturbances remains challenging
A non-linear controller was proposed with a non-linear model predictive control and a
non-linear disturbance observer to estimate the bounded lumped disturbances involving
variations of the helicopter dynamics and external influences introduced by wind turbulences. However, further investigation to design a decentralized and linear time-invariant
controller to restrain the effects of the lumped disturbances with only uniform finite norm
bounds were not fully discussed here. A standard H- controller can also be applied
to achieve robust flight control. However, reducing the influences of model uncertainties,
non-linear dynamics and external wind disturbances cannot be guaranteed in the whole
frequency range by this control approach.
One feature of this control method compared with previous approaches on trajectory
tracking control problem under wind disturbances is that the wind velocity does not
need to be measured. Another feature is that the desired dynamical and steady-state
tracking performances can be obtained even in aggressive mission under the influences
of time-varying wind gusts. The applications of the proposed robust control method can

be extended to a conventional 6-DOF helicopter, whose dynamics shares some special

features of the laboratory helicopter such as the non-linearities, parametric uncertainties
and external wind disturbances involved. Its robust controller can be designed in a similar
way with a nominal controller and a robust compensator.

1.3

OBJECTIVES

The objective is to develop a robust position controller for 3-DoF lab helicopter system
to improve the system performance under the effect of the external wind disturbances.
And to develop a tracking controller using state feedback approach, which helps the system
to trace the desired reference trajectory.

1.4

ORGANIZATION OF REPORT

The report is organised as follows. In Chapter 2, lab helicopter system theory is presented and its approximated linear model is derived. In Chapter 3, The design procedure
of controller is mentioned. And results and conclusion over the designed control are given
in Chapter 4 and 5 respectively.

Chapter 2
LAB HELICOPTER SYSTEM
2.1

INTRODUCTION

the laboratory helicopter has 3-DOF. That are elevation, pitch and travel. The helicopter frame, with two motors called front motor and back motor installed at its two ends,
is suspended from an instrumented joint mounted at one end of a long arm. The frame
is free to pitch around this arm and the arm is free to elevate and travel. The motors
are installed with propellers and a positive voltage to either motor results in an positive
elevation torque of the helicopter frame. Front motor applied with positive voltage causes
a positive pitch torque whereas back motor with positive voltage causes a negative pitch
torque. A travel torque of the helicopter frame can be produced if the pitch angle is
non-zero. An attitude controller is aimed at tracking references of the elevation and pitch
channels, whereas a position controller is focused on trajectory tracking for the elevation
and travel angles. The system is shown by fig 2.1.
Figure 2.1: Lab Helicopter system

2.2

SYSTEM MODELLING

The modelling provides the input-output relationship of the system in the mathematical
form of a ordinary differential equations. Model equations are useful to understand the
system state dynamics and behaviour of the system. For lab helicopter system a white
box modelling approach is used, i.e. input-output relations are obtained by using the
physical laws like force-energy balance, mass balance and total energy conservation of the
system. To develop the model for system certain assumptions are made and following
terms are defined.
The pitch axis is a line perpendicular to the length of body frame of helicopter at center
of gravity of the body frame and the pitch angle is the rotation of system about the pitch
axis. An elevation axis is the line parallel to length of body at the base frame and the
travel axis is the vertical line perpendicular to the elevation axis. The system modelling
conventions are
The Helicopter is in horizontal position, when elevation angle is zero.
Travel angle increases positively, when body rotates in counter-clock wise direction.
5

 Pitch angle is positive, when thrust due to front motor is higher than that of back
motor - nose above horizon position. There exist a mechanical limit for pitch angle.
trajectories and their derivatives are piecewise uniformly bounded
The external wind disturbances and their derivatives are bounded.
The mathematical equations of the rotational motions of the 3-DOF helicopter can be
derived by the EulerLagrange formula. In order to incorporate parameter uncertainties
and external wind disturbances into the helicopter model, the dynamical model of this
lab helicopter can be described as

+ a2 sin(t) + b cos(t)(Vf (t) + Vb (t)) + w (t)

(t)
= a1 (t)

+ a2 sin(t) + b (Vf (t) Vb (t) + w (t)

(t)
= a1 (t)

(t)
= a1 + a2 sin(t)(Vf (t) + Vb (t)) + a2 Vop sin(t) + w (t)

(2.1)
(2.2)
(2.3)

where (t) is the elevation angle, (t) is the pitch angle, (t) is the travel angle, Vf (t)
and Vb (t) are the control voltages of the front motor, and the back motor, respectively,
wi (t) (i = , , ) are the additional forces acting on the helicopter from the external
wind gusts, Vop is a positive constant, ai1 (i = , , ) are the damping coefficients for
the three angles, bi (i = , , ) and a2 are the voltage-to-torque scaling factors in each
channel and ai2 (i = , , ) positive coefficients.
The parameters can be split into two parts, one is nominal parts; denoted by superscript
N and other is uncertain parts represented by . They are given below by equation (2.4)
and (2.5) also control inputs ui (t) are defined, are given by equation (2.6) and (2.7).
aij = aN
ij + aij

(2.4)

bN
i

(2.5)
(2.6)
(2.7)

bi =
+ bi
u (t) = Vf (t) + Vb (t)
u (t) = Vf (t) Vb (t)

The helicopter model given by equations (2.1), (2.2) and (2.3) can be rewritten as linearised model considering the qi (t) as equivalent disturbances occurring in the each channel.
N
N

(t)
= aN
1 (t) + a2 (t) + b u (t) + q (t)
N
N

(t)
= aN
1 (t) + a2 (t) + b u (t) + q (t)
N

(t)
= aN
1 + b (t) + q1 (t)

(2.8)
(2.9)
(2.10)

By observing the above equations, it is clear that the pitch and travel are coupled. whereas
change in pitch or travel value will not effect the dynamics of elevation channel. The
coupled channels are made separate as given below.
Differentiating the equation no (2.10) twice, we get
...
N

(t) = aN
(t)
(2.11)
1 (t) + b (t) + q1
....
...
N
N
(t) = a (t) + b (t) + q1 (t)
(2.12)
1

value from equation (2.9) in the equation (2.12)

Substituting the (t)
....
...
N
N
N N
(2.13)
(t) = aN
1 (t)
1 (t) + b [a1 (t) + a2 (t) + b u (t) + q (t)] + q
....
...
N
N N
N N
N N
N
(t) = a1 (t) + a1 b (t) + b a2 (t) + b b u (t) + b q (t) + q1 (t) (2.14)


From equation (2.11), substitute the bN
(t) in equation (2.14)
....
...
...
N
N
N
N N
N
(t) = aN
(t)] + bN
(2.15)
1 (t)
1 (t) + a1 [ (t) a1 (t) q1
a2 (t) + b b u (t) + b q (t) + q
....
...
...
N
N N
N
N
N N
N
(t) = aN
(t) + aN
q1 (t)
1 (t) + a1 (t) a1 a1 (t) a1 q1
2 b (t) + b b u (t) + b q (t) + (2.16)
From equation (2.10), substitute the bN
(t) value in the equation (2.16) and rearranging
the parameters we get the equation as.
....
...
N
N
N N
N N
N N
(t) = (aN
(2.17)
1 + a1 ) (t) + (a2 a1 a1 )(t) a2 a1 (t) + b b u + q (t)
N
q (t) = q1 (t) aN
(t) + bN
1 q1
q (t) a2 q1 (t)

(2.18)

Thus equation (2.17) gives the decoupled model for travel channel of helicopter system and
equation (2.18) gives the equivalent disturbance function occurring in the travel system.

2.3

SUMMARY

The lab helicopter is a non-linear, coupled MIMO system. The system is having three
degrees of freedom and the model of the system is obtained by applying Euler-Lagrange
formula over each degree. The obtained model have non-linearity and have interaction
with the other states (pitch to travel) of the system. This model is further linearised and
interacting states are separated by decoupling the system.
The position control is developed by considering the linearised-decoupled model, which
is given by equation (2.17) and (2.8) for travel and elevation channel respectively. The
details of controller design are explained in chapter 3.

Chapter 3
CONTROLLER DESIGN
3.1

INTRODUCTION

The control block structure for 3-Dof lab helicopter system is shown in fig 4.3. The
robust controller is designed by applying the static linear feedback control for the nominal
linear system and signal compensation for uncertainties. The control inputs ui (t) (i = ,
) have two parts: the nominal control inputs uN
i (t) (i = , ) and the control inputs
vi (t) (i = , ) based on robust compensation technique. Thus, the control inputs have
the following forms.
ui (t) = uN
i (t) + vi (t)

(3.1)

Figure 3.1: Control Block Diagram

3.2

NOMINAL CONTROLLER DESIGN

To design the nominal state feedback control, first we neglect the uncertainty qi (t)
where (i = , ). The control law is given by the equation given below.
uN
i (t) = (Ki Xi (t) + ri (t))/cN

(3.2)

where Ki are chosen such that AiH = Ai + Bi Ki (i = , ) are Hurwitz matrices. ki

(i = 1, 2, 3) and kj ( j = 1, 2, . . . , 5) can be determined by the pole placement method
based on the steady-state error, overshoot and settling time requirements for the nominal
linear system. The system will take form
X i (t) = AiH Xi (t) + Bi (cN
i vi (t) + qi (t))

(3.3)

However, for the travel channel, (t) and (t) cannot be obtained by the measurements.
Therefore as full state feedback nominal controller cannot be used here. These states are
estimated by sensing the pitch dynamics of the system hence, redesign the nominal control
input uN
(t) as

3.3

ROBUST COMPENSATOR DESIGN

In order to restrain the influences of uncertainties, robust compensator are added. The
robust compensating signals vi (s) (i = , ) are produced as
vi (s) = Fi (s)qi (s)/cN
i

(3.4)

Figure 3.2: Control Block Diagram

Figure 3.3: Control Block Diagram

3.4

SUMMARY

Position control design for a lab helicopter system is stated in this chapter. The controller has two parts, the state feedback controller and a robust compensator. State
feedback controller is considered as nominal controller, it is required for smooth tracking
of the reference values and Robust compensator is designed based on H- control synthesis method. The effectiveness of these controllers over performance of the system is
validated by doing MATLAB simulation. The results are discussed in Chapter 4.

Chapter 4
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1

INTRODUCTION

4.2

RESULTS

The effectiveness of the controller is analysed by doing the simulation using the Simulink
tool in MATLAB. The output responses, which are obtained by developing a MATLAB
code for elevation and travel system is shown in fig 4.1 and fig 4.2. These responses are
with respect to the reference value as 1 degree unit input and without considering the
disturbance occurring in the system.
Figure 4.1: Elevation Response with State F/B Controller

Figure 4.2: Travel Response with State F/B Controller

The developed SimuLink models for elevation channel and travel channel are shown in
the fig 3.2 and fig 3.3 of previous Chapter 3. The model structure is exactly similar to
the control block diagram explained in previous Chapter 3.
Figure 4.3: Elevation Tracking for Square wave Ref Input w/o disturbance

Elevation system output response for a square wave reference input of period 30 sec and
amplitude of 30 degrees with uniform disturbance is shown in fig 4.5. and Travel system
response for a square wave reference input of 30 sec period and 30 degree of magnitude
with uniform time varying disturbance is shown in the fig 4.6.

4.3

DISCUSSION

4.4

SUMMARY

At first the system performance is obtained by using state feedback controller only for
a unit reference input value. And the state behaviour is discussed. The tracking of set
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Figure 4.4: Travel Tracking for Square wave ref Input w/o disturbance
Figure 4.5: Elevation Response for square wave ref.input with disturbance

point value is further analysed, using a state feedback controller alone and by applying a
square wave reference input to a system. Also a system performance using State feedback
controller and Robust compensator is discussed. The conclusions over the results are
presented in Chapter 5.

Figure 4.6: Travel Response for square wave ref. input with disturbance

Chapter 5
CONCLUSIONS
Using the robust compensator and state feedback controller a robust position control
is achieved for a 3DoF lab helicopter under the effect of the disturbances, where the state
feedback controller is responsible for tracking errors to the neighbourhood of the origin
in closed loop system and robust compensator provides the output robustness against the
wind disturbances.
Robustness of the system, depends upon the effective tuning of the robust compensator.
The parameters of the compensator are selected such that, it will suppress the unnecessary
frequency region where the singular value of the system is high. This means that the
compensator will reduce the effect of the high frequency disturbance on the output of the
system.

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REFERENCES
[1] Hao Liu, XiafuWang and Yisheng Zhong, "Robust position control of a lab helicopter
under wind disturbances,"IET Control Theory Appl., 2014, Vol. 8, Iss. 15, pp. 15551565.
[2] Bo Zheng and Yisheng Zhong, Member, IEEE, "Robust Attitude Regulation of a 3DOF Helicopter Benchmark: Theory and Experiments,"IEEE Trans. on Industrial
Electronics, vol. 58, no. 2, February 2011.
[3] Hao Liu, Geng Lu, and Yisheng Zhong, "Robust LQR Attitude Control of a 3-DOF
Laboratory Helicopter for Aggressive Maneuvers,"IEEE Trans. on Industrial Electronics, vol. 60, no. 10, October 2013.
[4] Thomas Kiefer, Knut Graichen, and Andreas Kugi, "Trajectory Tracking of a 3DOF
Laboratory Helicopter Under Input and State Constraints,"IEEE Trans. on Control
Systems Technology, vol. 18, no. 4, July 2010.
[5] Ioannis A. Raptis, Kimon P. Valavanis, Senior Member, IEEE, and Wilfrido A.
Moreno, Member, IEEE, "A Novel Nonlinear Backstepping Controller Design for Helicopters Using the Rotation Matrix,"IEEE Trans. on Control Systems Technology, vol.
19, no. 2, March 2011.
[6] Franois Lonard, Adnan Martini, and Gabriel Abba, Member, IEEE, "Robust Nonlinear Controls of Model-Scale Helicopters Under Lateral and Vertical Wind Gusts,"IEEE
Trans. on Control Systems Technology, vol. 20, no. 1, January 2012.
[7] Gareth D. Padfield, "Helicopter Flight Dynamics,"Second Edition, Blackwell Publishing, North America 2007.

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