Stabilization of integrator chains in the presence of magnitude and rate saturations: a gain scheduling approach

We present a gain scheduling technique for stabilizing integrator chains in the presence of magnitude and rate limitations on the input. The controller was first presented by Lauvdal et al. (1997), where they showed excellent experimental results on a pitch axis flight control experiment at Caltech in the case of input rate limits only. The controller has several interesting features: it is easy to tune and it gives a minimal loss in performance. These properties are illustrated in a simulation study.