Quanser's 3-DOF Helicopter control using LQR-I and MPC-based LQR controllers

This paper presents an MPC-based LQR controller design in order to control Quanser's 3-DOF Helicopter, which is an under-actuated unmanned aerial vehicle. This MIMO system has substantially nonlinear properties and unstable dynamics with strong coupling, making it difficult to control. The aim of this regulation is to track the desired travel and elevation trajectory. In the proposed hybrid MPC-LQR approach, a linear quadratic regulator controls the system outputs by manipulating the system inputs then the model predictive controller uses the model of the plant to make predictions about the future behavior of the constrained system. A regulation performance enhancement is obtained by combining the two controllers together. A basic LQR with an integrator is used here as a second controller. The implementation, of the proposed controllers, shows that the MPC-LQR controller outperformed the LQR-I one, in terms of stability and trajectory tracking.