112 Asian Journal of Control, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp.

112-122, March 2004

ROBUST GAIN-SCHEDULED CONTROL OF A VERTICAL TAKEOFF
AIRCRAFT WITH ACTUATOR SATURATION VIA THE LMI METHOD

P. C. Chen, Y. F. Jeng, Y. H. Chang, Y. M. Wang, and G. Chen.

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a robust gain-scheduled approach for the control of
a vertical/short takeoff. and landing (V/STOL) aircraft. The nonlinear aircraft
dynamics exhibit non-minimum phase characteristics arising from the para-
sitic coupling effect between the aircrafts lateral force and rolling moment.
The undesired coupling effect also causes modelling uncertainy of the aircraft
dynamics. The nonlinear aircraft dynamics are considered to be composed of
a nominal linear parameter varying (LPV) system and a linear system with a
norm bounded uncertainy matrix multiplied by the parasitic uncertain
non-minimum phase coupling parameter. The nominal LPV system is con-
sidered to be affinely dependent on a measurable varying parameter. The
ranges of the varying parameter and its variation as well as its parasitic in-
duced uncertain matrix are addressed by introducing the parameter-dependent
invariant ellipsoid interpretation for dealing with the issue of affinely quad-
ratic stabilization. In this paper, the relations among the magnitude of
actuator saturation, the maximum achievable relative stability, and the
sustainable coupling uncertainty are investigated for the considered robust
gain-scheduled design.

KeyWords: V/STOL aircraft, flight control, LPV system, LMI, non-mini-
mum phase system.


I. INTRODUCTION

The vertical/short takeoff and landing (V/STOL)
aircraft has the capabilities of high mobility and maneu-
verability. Typically, the YAV-8B Harrier, produced by
the McDonnell Aircraft Company [1], is powered by a
single turbo-fan engine with exhaust nozzles equipped in
each side of the fuselage to provide the gross thrust for
the aircraft. The nozzles are capable of rotating together
from the aft position forward approximately 100 degrees.
This change in the direction of thrust allows the aircraft

Manuscript received December 31, 2002; revised June 13,
2003; accepted August 26, 2003.
P.C. Chen and Y.F. Jeng are with Department of Aircraft
Engieering, Air Force Institute of Technology, Kaohsiung,
Taiwan, R.O.C.
Y.H. Chang is with Department of Electrical Engieering,
Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Y.M. Wang and G. Chen are with Department of Electrical
Engieering, Chung Cheng Institute of Technology, National
Defense University, Taoyuan, Taiwan, R.O.C.
This work was supported by the National Science Council of
the Republic of China under contract NSC-92-2212-E-344-003.
to operate in two modes and the transition between them.
In the mode of wing-borne forward flight, the nozzles
are in the aft position, and the aerodynamic forces pro-
duced by the surfaces of the wing and fuselage sustain
the weight of the aircraft. In the mode of jet-borne hov-
ering, the nozzles are directed vertically toward the
ground. Moreover, the transit process between these two
modes enables the aircraft to achieve versatility of ma-
neuvering in terms of the velocity and direction of
movement.
For the hovering operation considered in this paper,
the upward thrust produced by the nozzles is manipu-
lated by means of the throttle to produce motion in the
vertical direction. In order to produce motion in the lat-
eral direction, the Harrier is equipped with reaction con-
trol valves in the nose, tails, and wingtips. By using the
high pressure flow from the engines compressor, these
valves produce moments along the aircraft center of
mass to change its attitude. This mechanism of attitude
control enables the realization of lateral motion during
the hovering operation. By considering only the motion
in the vertical-lateral plane, we are able to represent the
aircraft by means of six-order non-linear dynamics. The
Brief Paper
P.C. Chen et al.: Robust Gain-Scheduled Control of A Vertical Takeoff Aircraft 113
states include the lateral position, vertical position, roll
angle, and their correspoding velocities.
When considering the hovering operation, if the air
from the reaction control valves for producing moment in
attitude control induces an unexpected force component
in the lateral direction, the system dynamics may exhibit
non-minimum phase characteristics, depending on the
direction of the induced force. The reason for the
non-minimum phase arising from the coupling effect be-
tween the lateral force and rolling moment is that in dur-
ing of lateral motion, the aircraft must first turn to a cor-
rect attitude; then the thrust force can move the aircraft so
as to follow the commands. If the moment changing the
aircraft attitude induces a force that moves the aircraft
toward the wrong lateral direction, then the inevitable
time delay will produce the non-minimum phase effect.
Several non-linear controller design approaches
have been investigated for application to these non-linear
non-minimum phase planar V/STOL aircraft dynamics.
One scheme is based on the well known input-output
feedback linearization approach, which employs a nonlin-
ear version of pole-zero cancellation [2-4]. For a
non-minimum phase system, this feedback linearization
will result in internally unstable dynamics, even if the
linearized system is stable in the sense of input-output
stability. To avoid this internal instability, feedback lin-
earization is performed based on approximated minimum
phase dynamics, where the influence of the rolling mo-
ment on the lateral force is neglected [1]. It has been
shown that the desired properties, such as bounded track-
ing and asymptotic stability, for the true system can be
maintained if the neglected parasitic coupling effect is
small. In [5], the non-minimum phase V/STOL dynamics
were modeled as a singularly perturbed model [6], in
which the nominal dynamics were represented by the ap-
proximated minimum phase planar V/STOL system, while
the parasitic coupling effect was denoted as perturbed fast
dynamics. Recently, a robustly nonlinear state-feedback
control law was designed for the planar V/STOL aircraft
based on an optimal control approach [7].
Another approach to V/STOL aircraft control is to
design a family of controllers beforehand according to the
operation envelope of the aircraft system. Then, in the
real-time application, a mechanism for scheduling this
family of controllers is activated to realize the instantane-
ous controller based on the aircraft operation. In [8], based
on the generic V/STOL aircraft model (GVAM), a gain-
scheduled design using the H

optimal control technique

was investigated. In [9], the non-linear non-minimum
phase aircraft dynamics were formulated as a linear pa-
rameter varying (LPV) system with the roll angle taken as
the varying parameter. In addition, the set-valued methods
for l
1
optimal control have been adopted based on the
LPV system with a couple of indexed parameters [10,11].
The control laws were non-linear, static state feedback,
where the approximated minimum phase system was used
and parasitic coupling was not addressed. The achieved
control objectives were the tracking performance of the
aircraft position in the vertical-lateral plane and the con-
straints placed on the control efforts. It was shown that the
undesired parasitic coupling caused the designated track-
ing performance to deteriorate, especially under a tight
tracking specification.
In this paper, a robust gain-scheduled controller is
designed via the linear matrix inequality (LMI) method
for planar V/STOL aircraft dynamics with imposed ac-
tuator saturation. The nonlinear aircraft dynamics are
considered to be composed of a nominal LPV system
and a linear system with a norm bounded uncertainy
matrix multiplied by the parasitic uncertain non-mini-
mum phase coupling parameter. The nominal LPV sys-
tem is considered to be affinely dependent on the trigo-
nometric functions of the measurable system varying
parameter, i.e., the roll angle. The ranges of the varying
parameter and its variation as well as the magnitude of
the denoted affinely trigonometric functions of the roll
angle and parasitic norm-bounded uncertain matrix are
addressed by introducing the parameter-dependent in-
variant ellipsoid interpretation to deal with the issue of
affinely quadratic stabilization. For this robust gain-
scheduled planar V/STOL aircraft controller design, the
relations among the magnitude of actuator saturation, the
maximum achievable relative stability, and the sustain-
able coupling uncertainty are investigated.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows.
Section II presents the modeling of the planar V/STOL
aircraft dynamics and their reformulation as an uncertain
LPV system with imposed input and output constraints.
Section III introduces the LMI approach for the robust
parameter-dependent planar V/STOL aircraft control.
Section IV presents the simulation results and a discus-
sion. Section V draws conclusions.

II. PLANAR V/STOL AIRCRAFT DYNAMICS

Consider one type of vertical/short takeoff and
landing (V/STOL) aircraft, the YAV-8B Harrier pro-
duced by the McDonnell Aircraft Company [1]. The
aircraft is powered by a single turbo-fan engine. The
exhaust nozzles on the turbo-fan engine can be simulta-
neously rotated from the aft position forward about 100
degrees. Therefore, the aircraft is allowed to maneuver in
conventional wing-borne flight, jet-borne flight, and un-
der even nozzle breaking. The thrust vector produced by
the throttle and nozzle enables two-degrees-of-freedom
control in the roll-yaw plane. In order to allow lateral
maneuverability during jet-borne operation, the aircraft
also has a reaction control system (RCS) to provide a
moment around the aircraft center of mass as shown in
Fig. 1.
114 Asian Journal of Control, Vol. 6, No. 1, March 2004

Fig. 1. The bleed air and moment of reaction control system (RCS).

By restricting the aircraft to jet-borne operation,
i.e., thrust directed toward the bottom of the aircraft, we
have simplified the dynamics which describe the motion
of the aircraft in the vertical-lateral directions, i.e., the
motion of a planar V/STOL (PVTOL) aircraft. The air-
craft states are the position of the center of mass, (X, Y ),
the roll angle , and the corresponding velocities, ( X

,
Y

). The control input is the thrust directed toward

the bottom of aircraft U
1
and the moment around the
aircraft center of mass U
2
. If the bleed air from the reac-
tion control valves produces a force which is not perpen-
dicular to the pitch axis, i.e., the angle 0 shown in
Fig. 1, then there will be a coupling effect between the
angle rolling moment and lateral moving force. Let the
amount of lateral force induced by the rolling moment be
denoted by
0
; then, we have the aircraft dynamics writ-
ten as
1 0 2
1 0 2
2
sin cos
cos sin
,
mX U U
mY U U mg
J U

(1)
where mg is the gravity force imposed on the aircraft
center of mass and J is the mass moment of inertia
around the axis extending through the aircraft center of
mass and along the fuselage.
To simplify the notation of the PVTOL aircraft
dynamics (1), the first and second equations in (1) are
divided by mg, and the third one by J. Let x := X/g, y :=
Y/g, u
1
:=
1
U
mg
, u
2
:=
2
U
J
, and :=
0
J
mg

; then, we
have the normalized PVTOL aircraft dynamics as shown
in Fig. 2:
1 2
1 2
2
sin cos ,
cos sin 1,
.
x u u
x u u
u

(2)
The term 1 denotes the normalized gravity accelera-
tion. The coefficient denotes the parasitic coupling
effect between the lateral force and rolling moment,
which results in the non-minimum phase characteristic.

Fig. 2. The dynamics of the planar V/STOL (PVTOL) aircraft.

Note that the possible parasitic yaw/rolling coupling and
aerodynamic effects are neglected for the sake of sim-
plicity.
The nonlinear PVTOL model (2) is rewritten as an
uncertain LPV system with state-space dependence on
the measurable varying roll angle and uncertain cou-
pling parameter :
1 2
( ( ) ( )) , x A x B B u D

+ + + (3)
where x

= (x, x , y, y , ,

)
T
and u = (u
1
, u
2
)
T
. In the
system matrix A

, the elements A

(1, 2), A

(3, 4), and

A

(5, 6) are equal to 1, and others are equal to zero. The

parameter-dependent input matrices are
1
2
0 sin 0 cos 0 0
( ) and
0 0 0 0 0 1
0 0 0 0 0 0
( ) ,
0 cos 0 sin 0 0
T
T
B
B

j \

, (
( ,
j \

, (
( ,
(4)
and the disturbance matrix D = (0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0)
T
repre-
sents the gravity acceleration.
It is noted that the state dynamics (x, x ), (y, y ),
and (,

) are decoupled, and that each is characterized

by the block diagonal matrix
0 1
0 0
j \
, (
( ,
as shown in the
system matrix A

. In addition, the nominal input matrix

B
1
() corresponding to the lateral position dynamics (x,
x ) is
0 0
0 0
j \
, (
( ,
at the equilibrium value = 0. Therefore,
the LPV representation of the PVTOL aircraft (3) is not
even controllable at the equilibrium point = 0 under the
lateral position dynamics in the case of a nominal air-
craft system with = 0.
To remedy this uncontrollability arising from the
LPV representation (3) of the original nonlinear PVTOL
dynamics (2), the following procedures are performed.
Let the variable of thrust u1 be centered around equilib-
rium point 1, i.e., u
1
:= 1 +
1
. The revised LPV sys-
tem of (3) is
P.C. Chen et al.: Robust Gain-Scheduled Control of A Vertical Takeoff Aircraft 115
1 2
( ( ) ( )) ( ), x A x B B u D

+ + +

(5)
where = (
1
, u
2
)
T
and ( ) D

= (0, sin, 0, 1 + cos,

0, 0)
T
. Let the vector ( ) D

be decomposed as ( ) D

=
A
0
x

( ) D . In the matrix A
0
, the only nonzero ele-
ment is A
0
(2, 5) = 1. In the vector

( ) D = (0, sin,
0, 1 + cos, 0, 0)
T
, the elements sin and 1 +
cos represent the first order Taylor series approxima-
tion errors of the trigonometric functions sin and
cos , respectively. Then, the LPV PVTOL aircraft
dynamics (5) can be rewritten as
0 1 2

( ( ) ( )) ( ), x A x B B u D

+ + + (6)
where A
0
:= A

+ A
0
, and

( ) D is a gravitational dis-
turbance. Note that the introduced nonzero element of
A
0
enables the lateral position variables (x, x ) to be
controlled through the (,

) dynamics.

III. ROBUST GAIN-SCHEDUL
D CONTROLLER DESIGN

The robust gain-scheduled control for the PVTOL
dynamics (6) needs to maintain a certain degree of rela-
tive stability for all admissible values of the measurable
varying parameter and its variation rate

, the ex-
pected magnitude of the uncertain coupling coefficient ,
and the parameter-dependent gravitional disturbance

( ) D while being subject to physical limitations on the

magnitude of the control efforts,
1
u and
2
u . The
designed composite control law is denoted as = +

,
where represents a linear parameter-dependent state-
feedback control law constructed by means of LMI algo-
rithms for the uncertain LPV PVTOL dynamics without
gravitational disturbance

( ) D ,
0 1 2
( ( ) ( )) , x A x B B u

+ + (7)
and

is a nonlinear control law introduced to handle

the disturbance effect of

( ) D . In this section, the ro-

bust gain-scheduled control laws obtained via LMI ap-
proaches for the aircraft dynamics (7) without and with
the uncertain coefficient are presented in sequence.
Then, the construction of the nonlinear control law

used to cancel out the gravitational disturbance effect

( ) D is introduced.

3.1 Gain-scheduled control for a nominal aircraft in
affine LPV representation

The PVTOL aircraft dynamics (7), ignoring the
uncertain parameter while imposing magnitude con-
straints on the control effort , the roll angle , and the
variation rate of the roll angle

, are represented by
0 1 ,max max max
( ) , , , .
i i
x A x B u u u



+

(8)
The parameter-dependent input matrix B
1
(), as shown
in (4), is denoted as an affine function of the parame-
ter-dependent elements, p
s
:= sin and p
c
:= cos :
1 0
( ): ,
s s c c
B B p B p B + + (9)
where
0
0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 1 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0
, , .
0 0 0 0 1 0
0 0 0 0 0 0
0 1 0 0 0 0
s c
B B B
j \ j \ j \
, ( , ( , (

, ( , ( , (
, ( , ( , (

, ( , ( , (
, ( , ( , (
, ( , ( , (
, ( , ( , (
, ( , ( , (
( , ( , ( ,
(10)
For the roll angle with bounded magnitude
max
, let the
parameter ranges be denoted as
max max
max
[ sin , sin ]: [ , ],
[cos , 1]: [ , ].
s s s
c c c
p p p
p p p

For the linear gain-scheduled state-feedback con-
trol law = K( )x

used to stabilize the input and output

constrained nominal PVTOL aircraft (8), the positive
parameter-dependent quadratic Lyapunov function V(x

,
) =
T
x

P( )x

, P( ) > 0 is assumed. If the negative

change rate of V(x

, ), i.e., ( , ) V x

< 0, is estab-
lished for A
0
, replaced by
0
:= A
0
I, where < 0, then
the maximum relative stability achieved as well as the
largest decay rate is = , which means that
lim ( )
t
t
e x t

= 0 for any initial condition x

0
= x

(t
0
). In
the case of a tracking control problem, we have
0
lim ( )
t
t
e r x t

= 0 for any tracking command r

0
=
r(t
0
) and initial tracking error r
0
x

(t
0
).
The need for ( , ) V x

< 0 is equivalent to
0 1
0 1
( ( ) ( )) ( )
( )( ( ) ( )) ( ) 0.
T
A B K P
P A B K P


+
+ + + <

(11)
Denoting P( )
1
= Q( ), and K( )Q( ) = L( ), and
from the identity
1 1 1
( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ), P P P P Q



(12)
the condition of the matrix inequality (11) can be rewrit-
ten as
0 0 1
1
( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
( ) ( ) ( ) 0.
T T T
Q A A Q L B
B L Q


+ +
+ <

(13)
For the affinely parameter-dependent matrix B
1
( ) in (9),
116 Asian Journal of Control, Vol. 6, No. 1, March 2004
the matrix variables Q( ) and L( ) can be assumed to
have the same affine dependence on the varying pa-
rameters p
s
and p
c
. We can then proceed with the ap-
proach presented in [12]. However, for the parameter-
independent system matrix
0
and parameter-dependent
control law K( ) = L( )Q( )
1
, a single parame-
ter-independent matrix variable for L( ) is chosen to
reduce the numerical complexity. Thus, we have
0
( ) 0, ( ) .
s s c c
Q Q p Q p Q L L + + > (14)
Then, the matrix inequality (13) reads as
0 0 1 1
( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
( ) 2 ( ) 0.
T T T
c s s c
Q A A Q L B B L
p Q p Q Q


+ + +
<

(15)
Since the matrix inequality (15) is affinely dependent on
the parameters {p
s
, p
c
} when

is fixed and affinely

dependent on

when {p
s
, p
c
} is fixed, (15) is convex
along each direction of {p
s
, p
c
} and

. The feasibility of
(15) can be established through evaluation only for the
extreme values of the scalar varying parameters {p
s
, p
c
,

} and recast as the generalized eigenvalue minimiza-

tion problem (GEVP) [13] to maximize the achievable
relative stability = as follows:
max max
0
minimize : (14), (15), for { , , }
{{ , },{ , },{ , }}
with matrix variables , , , .
s c
s s c c
s c
p p
p p p p
Q Q Q L

(16)
The objective of the maximized relative stability or
decay rate will tend to cause a controller to exhibit high
gain. The required control effort may exceed the magni-
tude limits of the system actuators. Moreover, the be-
havior of the controlled system with the high gain con-
troller will be sensitive to the values of the varying pa-
rameter of system. Therefore, when designing a control-
ler with the maximum relative stability, we need to con-
sider the system varying parameter and the physical con-
straint on the actuator as well. The magnitude constraints
on the control efforts
i
, the roll angle , and the varia-
tion rate of the roll angle

can be addressed by intro-

ducing invariant ellipsoid interpretation [14,15] of the
parameter-dependent quadratic Lyapunov matrix P( ) >
0 such that
0 0
( )
T
x P x

1 for some initial condition
x
0
, which in turn can be written as the LMI constraint in
the affinely parameter-dependent matrix variable Q( ):
0
0
1
0.
( )
T
x
x Q

j \

, (
( ,
(17)
If Q( ) is also a stabilizing solution for the GEVP de-
scribed in (16), then
0 0
( ) ( ) 1
T T
x P x x P x

< . The
magnitude constraint
,max i i
u u can be satisfied if
1 1 1
2
,max
1
( ) ( ) ( ) ,
T T T
i i
i
x Q L LQ x x Q x
u




where L
i
R
16
is the i-th row of the matrix L and can
be written as the following LMI condition for the given
u
i,max
:
2
,max
( )
0,
T T
i
i i
Q L s
s L u

j \
, (
, (
( ,
(18)
where the row vector s
i
R
12
with the i-th element is
equal to 1 and the others are equal to zero. Similarly, the
magnitude constraint on the roll angle,

max
, and
variation rate of the roll angle,
max

, can be satis-
fied if the following LMI conditions hold for the given

max
and
max

:
5 6
2 2
5 max 6 max
( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
0, 0,
( ) ( )
T T
Q Q r Q Q r
r Q I r Q I


j \ j \
, ( , (
, ( , (
( , ( ,

(19)
where the row vector r
j
R
16
with the j-th element is
equal to 1 and the others are equal to zero.

3.2 Robust gain-scheduled control for an aircraft
with the uncertain coupling factor

Consider the LPV PVTOL dynamics with the un-
certain coefficient as shown in (7) and magnitude con-
straints imposed on the control efforts , the roll angle ,
and the variation rate of the roll angle

:
0 1 2 ,max
max max
( ( ) ( )) , ,
, .
i i
x A x B B u u u




+ +

(20)
The controller design must be robust to the measurable
varying and bounded parameters ,

and the uncertain

parasitic coupling . For the linear gain-scheduled state-
feedback control law, = K( )x

, to robustly stabilize
the PVTOL aircraft dynamics (20), let
0
:= A
0
I, and
let the parameter-dependent quadratic Lyapunov func-
tion V(x

, ) = ( )
T
x P x

, P( ) > 0; then, the need of
negative change rate of V(x

, ) is equivalent to
0 1 2
0 1 2
( ( ( ) ( )) ( )) ( )
( )( ( ( ) ) ( )) ( ) 0.
T
A B B K P
P A B B K P


+ +
+ + + + <

(21)
Denoting P( )
1
= Q( ) and K( )Q( ) = L( ), and
from the identity in (12), the matrix inequality (21) can
be rewritten as
0 0 1 2
1 2
( ) ( ) ( ) ( ( ) ( ))
( ( ) ( )) ( ) ( ) 0.
T T T
Q A A Q L B B
B B L Q


+ + +
+ + <

(22)
P.C. Chen et al.: Robust Gain-Scheduled Control of A Vertical Takeoff Aircraft 117
The input matrix B
1
( ) can be denoted as the affinely
parameter-dependent matrix as shown in (9) and (10).
The input matrix B
2
( ), multiplied by the uncertain co-
efficient , is represented by
2 0 20
( ) ( ( )) : ( ) , B M N B M N + + (23)
where
max
max
max 0
max
0
max
0 cos 1 0 0 0 0
,
0 0 0 sin 0 0
1
0 0 1
cos 1 , ,
0 1
0 0
cos 1
0
cos 1
.
sin
0
sin
T
M
N

j \

, (
( ,
j \
j \
, (

, (
, (
( ,
, (
( ,
j \
, (

, (

, (
, (
( ,
(24)
By the formulation of B
2
( ) in (23), (24), and the as-
sumed matrix variables Q( ), L( ) shown in (14), the
matrix inequality (22) becomes
0 0 1 20
1 20
( ) ( ) ( ( ) )
( ( ) ) ( ( ) )
( ( ) ) ( ) 0.
T T T
T T
c s s c
Q A A Q L B B
B B L L M N
M N L p Q p Q



+ + +
+ + +
+ <

(25)
Note that in the parameter-dependent matrix ( ) and
the elements ( )(1, 1) [0, 1], ( )(2, 2) [1, 1],
and ( ) satisfy the norm bounded condition
max
( ) ( ) , ,
T
I

(26)
which yields the following inequality:
( )
0,
( )
T
I
I

j \

, (

( ,
(27)
through the application of Schur complements [14]. For
any non-zero number , we have
( )
1
1
( )
0
( )
T
T T
T
I M
M L N
I NL

j \ j \
, ( , (
, (

( ,( ,
(28)
and
2 2
( ( ) ) ( ) .
T T T T
M NL M NL MM L N NL

+ + (29)
Then, we have the sufficient condition of (25):
0 0 1 20 1 10
2 2
( ) ( ) ( ( ) ) ( ( ) )
( ) 0. (30)
T T T
T T T
c s s c
Q A A Q L B B B B L
MM L N NL p Q p Q

+ + + + +
+ + <

which in turn can be written as
2
1 2
( ( ), , )
( ) 2 ( ) 0,
T
T T
c s s c
Q L MM
L N
p Q p Q Q
NL I

j \ +
, (
<
, (
, (

( ,

(31)
where
0 0 1 20
1 20
( ( ), , ) ( ) ( ) ( ( ) )
( ( ) ) .
T T T
Q L Q A A Q L B B
B B L

+ + +
+ +

Similar to the LMI conditions for the nominal aircraft
case, the feasibility of (31) for the given parasitic uncer-
tain level can be established by evaluating (31) only for
the extreme values of the scalar varying parameters {p
s
,
p
c
,

} and recast as the GEVP type LMI to maximize

the achievable relative stability = as follows:
max max
0
minimize : (14), (31), for { , , }
{{ , },{ , },{ , }}
with variables , , , .
s c
s s c c
s c
p p
p p p p
Q Q Q L

(32)
3.3 Gravitational disturbance cancellation

Consider the equivalent LPV representation of the
PVTOL aircraft dynamics shown in (6) with magnitude
constraints imposed on the control efforts , the roll an-
gle , and the variation rate of the roll angle

:
0 1 2
,max max max

( ( ) ( )) ( ),
, , .
i i
x A x B B u D
u u




+ + +

(33)
The composite control law = +

is assumed, where
= K( )x

is constructed by means of K( ) = LQ( )

1

for the case of the nominal aircraft in (8) or the case with
considered in (20). The nonlinear control law

is in-
troduced to eliminate the effect of the gravitational
disturbance

( ) D such that a stabilizing control law

designed for system (8) or (20) will still stabilize the
original aircraft system (33) whether the uncertainy is
present or not. In terms of the parameter-dependent
quadratic Lyapunov function V(x

, ) = ( )
T
x P x

, P( )
> 0, with a negative change rate ( , ) V x

< 0, the con-

trol law

needs to satisfy
1 2
1 2

(( ( ) ( )) ( )) ( )

( )(( ( ) ( )) ( )) 0.
T
T
B B u D P x
x P B B u D




+ +
+ + +

(34)
In order not to incur the uncertainty and due to the fact
that the first column of the parameter-dependent matrix
B
2
( ) is zero, which is multipiled by the uncertainty , the
form of the control law

= (u

, 0)
T
is assumed to be such
118 Asian Journal of Control, Vol. 6, No. 1, March 2004
that B
2
( )

= 0. Therefore, only an extra control signal

for the thrust is manipulated for

. By substituting the
components of B
1
( ) and

( ) D , and denoting g
l
as the
l-th element of the on-line computed vector Q( )
1
x

for
the nominal system in (8) or for the uncertainty consid-
ered in (20), we can rewrite condition (34) as
2 4
( sin ( 1)) (cos ( 1) 1) 0. u g u g

+ + + (35)
One possibility for the choice of u

is simply to have u

=
4 2
4 2
(1 cos ) (sin )
cos sin
g g
g g


+

such that the equality of

(35) holds. A reasonable magnitude limit for u

can be
imposed, that is, u

u
,max
, in the on-line application.

IV. SIMULATIONS AND DISCUSSION

The gain-scheduled controller designs for the input
and output constrained PVTOL aircraft dynamics ob-
tained via the LMI approach can be numerically con-
structed for the types of GEVP problem as follows.

Nominal aircraft in the affine LPV representation:
Maximize the relative stability = for the nominal
aircraft in (8) with the uncertain coefficient = 0 by
means of (16) while maintaining various magnitude
constraints imposed on the control efforts
i
by (17),
(18) and on the roll angle variation by (19) for {p
s
, p
c
,

} {{ , }
s s
p p , { , }
c c
p p ,
max max
{ , }}

. The ini-
tial conditions considered in the parameter-dependent
invariant ellipsoid representation (17) are specified as
x
0
= (1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0)
T
since the performance objec-
tive is to maintain tracking of the normalized position
command signal in the horizontal and vertical direc-
tions. With the following specified magnitude con-
straints: deviated thrust u
1,max
= 0.6, moment u
2,max
=
{0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 1.2}, roll angle and variation
rate of roll angle
max
=
max

= u
2,max
/k, the
achieved maximum relative stability
*
= . for k
{3, 4, 5, 6} is that depicted in Fig. 3. The chosen mag-
nitude constraints
max
and
max

are proportional to
u
2,max
since the control moment u
2
needs a certain
range of and

to manipulate motion in the hori-

zontal plane. However, the quantities of
max
and
max

correspond to the extreme values of the scalar varying
parameters {p
s
, p
c
,

} that need to be addressed in

the matrix inequality constraints {(16), (17), (18),
(19)}. It can be seen from Fig. 3 that a looser attitude
maneuverability constraint tends to allow faster posi-
tion tracking when a small magnitude of the control
moment is available, while a tighter attitude maneu-
verability constraint tends to maintain faster position
tracking when a large magnitude of the control mo-
ment is available.

Fig. 3. Maximum relative stability for u
1,max
= 0.6, = 0 with various
constraints imposed on u
2,max
,
max
, and
max

.


Fig. 4. Maximum relative stability for u
1,max
= 0.6, with various con-
straints imposed on u
2,max
, , and
max
, and
max

= u
2,max
/5.

Aircraft with the uncertain coupling factor: Maximize
the relative stability = for the aircraft dynamics in
(20) with an estimated tolerable uncertain level by
means of (32) while maintaining various magnitude
constraints imposed on the control efforts
i
by (17),
(18) and on the roll angle variation by (19) for {p
s
, p
c
,

} {{ , }
s s
p p , { , }
c c
p p ,
max max
{ , }}

. To let
considered {x
0
, u
1,max
, u
2,max
} to have the same values
as for the nominal case and
max
=
max

= u
2,max
/5,
the achieved maximum relative stability
*
= . for
= {0, 1, 2, 3, 4} is depicted in Fig. 4. It can be seen
that the position tracking performance worsens due to
the presence of uncertain coupling, and the large mag-
nitude of the control moment tends to magnify the
detrimental nonminimum phase effect induced by the
uncertain coupling.

Simulations of the closed-loop controlled system
were conducted as shown in Fig. 5, where the nonlinear
PVTOL dynamics are from (3) with B(, ) := B
1
( ) +
B
2
( ) and the command generator is a low-pass filter
with a bandwidth of 100 rad/sec for both the lateral
command x
d
and vertical command y
d
. Therefore, the
actual tracking command (x
r
, y
r
) issued to the controlled
system is generated from the exogenous command signal
(x
d
, y
d
) by r = A

r + B

d, where
P.C. Chen et al.: Robust Gain-Scheduled Control of A Vertical Takeoff Aircraft 119

Fig. 5. The structure of the simulation of the controlled PVTOL air-
craft.

100 0
: , : , : ,
0 100
100 0
: .
0 100
d r
d r
x x
r d A
y y
B

j \ j \ j \

, ( , ( , (

( , ( , ( ,
j \

, (
( ,

The parameter-dependent state-feedback matrix K( ) =
L(Q
0
+ p
s
Q
s
+ p
c
Q
c
)
1
is obtained with the specified con-
trol effort constraints u
1,max
= u
2,max
= 0.6,
max
=
max

=
u
2,max
/5 for both designs whether parasitic uncertainty
is present or not. For the nominal aircraft, the achieved
maximum relative stability is

= 0.2387 with the ma-

trix variable
0.0035 0.0025 0.0859 0.3081 0.0035 0.0007
0.0148 0.0454 0.0008 0.0007 0.1067 0.0467
. L

j \
, (
( ,

(36)
For the aircraft dynamics with = 2, the achieved rela-
tive stability is
*
= 0.2115 with the matrix variable
0.0000 0.0000 0.0905 0.2954 0.0000 0.0000
0.0136 0.1387 0.0000 0.0000 0.0139 0.0623
. L

j \
, (
( ,

(37)
Figures 6-17 show the time responses of the
closed-loop system with the parameter-dependent con-
troller K( ) constructed for the case of the nominal air-
craft. Figures 6, 8, 10, and 12 show the time responses of
the horizontal and vertical position (x, y), where the
dashed line -- denotes the exogenous commands x
d
and
y
d
, the dotted line .. denotes the actual commands x
r

and y
r
, and the solid line denotes the controlled time
response. Figures 7, 9, 11, and 13 show the time re-
sponses of the roll angle and its variation rate (,

),
and the magnitude of the control effort, = (
1
, u
2
),
where the solid line denotes the roll angle and con-
trol moment u
2
, and the dotted line .. denotes the
variation rate of the roll angle

and the deviation of

Fig. 6. Time response of (x, y) for the lateral command with = 0.


Fig. 7. Time response of (,

), (
1
, u
2
) for the lateral command with
= 0.


Fig. 8. Time response of (x, y) for the vertical command with = 0.


Fig. 9. Time response of (,

), (
1
, u
2
) for the vertical command
with = 0.
120 Asian Journal of Control, Vol. 6, No. 1, March 2004

Fig. 10. Time response of (x, y) for the command (x
d
, y
d
) = (1, 1) with
= 0.


Fig. 11. Time response of (,

), (
1
, u
2
) for the command (x
d
, y
d
) =
(1, 1) with = 0.


Fig. 12. Time response of (x, y) for the lateral command with = sin
0.2t.


Fig. 13. Time response of (,

), (
1
, u
2
) for the lateral command
with = sin 0.2t.

Fig. 14. Time response of (x, ,

) for the lateral command with =

{0.1, 0.3, 0.5}.


Fig. 15. Time response of (
1
, u
2
) for the lateral command with =
{0.1, 0.3, 0.5}.


Fig. 16. Time response of (x, ,

) for the lateral command with =

0.55.


Fig. 17. Time response of (
1
, u
2
) for the lateral command with =
0.55.
P.C. Chen et al.: Robust Gain-Scheduled Control of A Vertical Takeoff Aircraft 121
the thrust
1
. As shown in Figs. 6-11 for the system
without parasitic coupling , the position tracking per-
formance is good when the command (x
d
, y
d
) is issued as
(1, 0), (1, 0), or (1, 1). The quantities of
1
u ,
2
u ,

,
and

satisfy the speci.ed constraints as well.

When a time-varying uncertainy = sin 0.2t is pre-
sent as shown in Figs. 12-13, the positive values of
produce the non-minimum phase characteristic and cause
the position tracking response for the lateral command
(x
d
, y
d
) = (1, 0) to deteriorate. It is shown that a larger
attitude change occurs, and that the required control
moment u
2
increases as well. Figures 14-15 show the
time response of (x, ,

) and (
1
, u
2
) for the lateral
command (x
d
, y
d
) = (1, 0) with the uncertainty = {0.1,
0.3, 0.5}. It can be seen that large oscillations occur dur-
ing the transition due to the consistently positive values
of . Figures 16-17 show the time response of (x, ,

)
and (
1
, u
2
) for the lateral command (x
d
, y
d
) = (1, 0) with
the uncertain parasitic coupling = 0.55, where the dot-
ted line .. denotes the time response with the magni-
tude constraint imposed on the control moment u
2
, and
the solid line denotes the time response without satu-
ration of the control moment u
2
. It can be seen that the
resulting oscillations increase and eventually cause
instability.
For the case where the parameter-dependent con-
troller K( ) is constructed while the uncertainty level
= 2 is explicitly addressed, Figs. 18-20 show the time
responses of (x, y), (,

), and (
1
, u
2
) for the issued
command (x
d
, y
d
) = (1, 1) in the presence of parasitic
uncertainty = {0, 1, 2, 3}. The simulation results show
that robustness is established, and that the design speci-
fication is well satisfied.

V. CONCLUSIONS

This paper has presented a robust gain-scheduled
control for a PVTOL aircraft via the LMI method. The
design is based on an LPV equivalent representation for
non-linear PVTOL aircraft dynamics subject to an un-
certain non-minimum phase effect without any truncated
linearization or approximation. These LPV PVTOL air-
craft dynamics consist of a nominal LPV system and a
linear system, where the norm bounded uncertainy ma-
trix is multiplied by the uncertain parasitic coupling. For
the nominal LPV system, which is considered to be affi-
nely dependent on the trigonometric functions of the
measurable varying roll angle, the ranges of the varying
parameter and its variation as well as the magnitudes of
the denoted affinely trigonometric functions and para-
sitic uncertain matrix have been addressed by introduc-
ing the parameter-dependent invariant ellipsoid interpre-
tation to deal with the issue of affinely quadratic stabili-
zation. The relations among the magnitude of actuator
saturation, the maximum achievable relative stability,

Fig. 18. Time response of (x, y) for the command (x
d
, y
d
) = (1, 1) with
= {0, 1, 2, 3}.


Fig. 19. Time response of (,

) for the command (x

d
, y
d
) = (1, 1)
with = {0, 1, 2, 3).


Fig. 20. Time response of (
1
, u
2
) for the command (x
d
, y
d
) = (1, 1)
with = {0, 1, 2, 3).

and the sustainable coupling uncertainty have been in-
vestigated in this robust gain-scheduled design.

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