Proceedings ofthe 41sl IEEE

Conferenceon Decision and Control

Las Vega, Nevada USA, December 2002

FrP03-6

Robust Nonlinear H inf Decoupling Control

of Flight Vehicle in Hovering
Ciann-Dong Yang and Wen-Hsiung Liu

Chien-Chung Kung

Institn'te of Aeronauties and Astronautics

National Cheng Kung University
Tainan 701, TAIWAN, R.O.C.
E-mail: cdyang@mail.ncku.edu.hv

Department of Aeronautical Engineering

Chung Cheng Institute of Technology
Taoyuan, TAIWAN, R.O.C.

Abstract
Although longitudinal and lateral dynamics of
helicopters in hovering are highly nonlinear and severely
coupled, we will show in this paper that the nonlinear six
degree-of-freedom H, controller designed for hovering
helicopter can be exactly separated into two three
degree-of-freedom controllers, one for translational motion
and the other for rotational motion.
Keywords: Nonlinear H
flight control; Helicopter
control; Hovering mode.

1.

Introduction

High levels of agility, maneuverability and the

capability of operating in degraded visual environments
and adverse weather conditions are the new trends of
helicopter design nowadays. Helicopter flight control
system should make these performance requirements
achievable by improving tracking performance and
disturbance rejection capability. Robustness is one of the
critical issues which must be considered in the control
system design for such high-performance helicopters, since
any mathematical helicopter model, especially those
covering large flight envelope, will unavoidably have
uncertainty due to the empirical representation of
aerodynamic forces and moments. To preserve stability and
performance in the presence of helicopter model
uncertainties and exogenous disturbances, robust control
techniques such as H , , H , , ,U -analysis, and
quantitative feedback theory (QFT) are useful tools to meet
the control requirements.
The control of a helicopter in hover is always a
challenge for control engineers. Many control methods
have been proposed for hovering control, including linear
approaches such as HI [l], LQG [2], model following [3],
individual channel analysis and design [4], H , design
[5], [6], and the nonlinear approaches such as sliding mode
[7],hackstepping technique [8],inputloutput linearization
[9], and nonlinear dynamic inversion [lo]. Nevertheless, it
is noted that nonlinear H , method has not been proposed
to hover control till now.
As to the helicopter decoupling control, the design of
a decoupling compensator for the Apache helicopter was
considered in [I 11, where h e a r quadratic regulation with

0-7803-7516-5/02/$17.00 02002 IEEE

4486

implicit model following was used to design a decoupling

compensator for a reduced-order linear model in hover.
The decoupling effect achieved by conventional
approaches is only an approximation, while the nonlinear
H , decoupling hover control addressed here is a totally
new concept for helicopter control in the literature. It is a
quite surprising result that nonlinear H , controller
design can be exactly decoupled in such a way that the
controller governing translational dynamics can be totally
separated from the controller governing rotational
dynamics. It is emphasized here that what is decoupled is
the controller design under nonlinear H , framework but
not the helicopter dynamics.

2. Hover Dynamics
The six degree-of-freedom rigid-body motion of
helicopter can he described as following:
msU = m, ( - W e + VR)+F, +d,
(la)

+ WP)+ F, t c j y

(Ib)

m,@' = m, (-VI'+ UQ)+ F, t d,

(IC)

m,P = m, (-UR

I,P = I , ( R + P Q ) + I- ( Q - PR) - I,= (R' - Q')

+(I, - Z,)QR + L + d,

( P + QR)+ I , ( k - P Q )- I, (p i - R ' )
+ (Ii, - 1,)PR + A4 + d.
I,R = ,Z (Q+ PR) + I, (P- QR)- I, (Q' - P ' )

I,Q = I-

(Id)
(le)

( 1 f)

+(I, - I , ) PQ + N + d ,
where U, V, W , and P, Q, R are standard notations for
linear and angular velocities, respectively; 1, , I,, ,,.,
etc, are the moments of inertia of the helicopter; mS is the
helicopter's mass. Forces (Fz, F,,, FJ and moments (L. M,
N) consist of (a) aerodynamics force and momenL @)
gravitational force, (c) propulsive force and moment. They
can he described as the sum of the contributions from the
five uh-systems

F~=X,+X,+X,+X,p+X,,-m,gsin8
F, = Y, +Yr + U,
F, = 2,

+ Z,

+Kp +Y," +m,gsinq5cosB

+ Z, + Z,p+ 2," + m,g cos$bcosS

L = LR +r,+ LF + LSP+L,.

M = MR+ M , + M, + M e + MG
N = NR + N , + N , + Nm + N,.
where the subscripts stand for: rotor, R; tail rotor, T;
fuselage, F; horizontal tail plane, tp; and vertical fin,fn.
6' and #are Euler angles, while m, g is the gravitational
force. Detailed derivation can be found in Ref.12.
To further simplify the notations, the following
definitions are used.
z(r)=[u Y W ] ' = [ U , v, W , ] r + [ u Y w]'

=I,+ U ( l )
n(r)=[P

u,(t)=[F,

Q
F,

The hovering control mode corresponds to the condition:

CO= 0,= 0 . Hovering mode appears in the control of
helicopters or vertical take-off and landing airplane
where both velocities and body rates of flight vehicle
need be driven to zero. Letting Z, = 0,= 0 in Eq. (3),
we have
(4a)

Helicopter's attitude is described by the quaternions

( E ~ , ~ ) = ( E , . E ~ , E , ,which
~),
are related to the body
angular velocity w via the relation

Q, R,l'+[p 4 rl'
=no
+0(1)
F.I'=[F,,
F,, F,lr+[f f, fJ'

Rl'=[P,

=UT, + U , ( 1 )

ua(t)=[L M

NI'=[&
= U%

M O No]'+[( m
+U,

n]'

Combining Eq.(4a) and Eq.(4b) gives the complete

equations of hovering motion:

(I)

d, = [ d , d, dxlr,d , = [ d , d
. 4
1'
where the symbols with subscript zero denote the
values at equilibrium point (trim condition), and the
lower-case symbols denote the deviation from the
equilibrium point. However, it needs to be noted here
that we do not make the assumption of small deviation,
i.e., the nonlinear terms such as uTo and wTw are
not be negligible when compared with the linear terms
U=[.
Y w]' and w = [ p q r]'. The moments of

inertia matrix IM and cross-product matrix S ( w )

I.-

induced by the vector w = [ p q .]'are

I=

-I,

yz;

21.

0 -r

-1,

The trim force U%

s(4=[

-4 P0

and trim moment U% can be

solved from Eqs. ( I ) by letting

g = b = w = I , = d D =I dY = O
Substituting uZ, and uno into Eqs. (I), yields
nonlinear equations of motion with respect to
equilibrium point as
u=-s(w)u-s(n,)o-s(o)~,+m;'u,
+mild,
I,= -I;s(w)IM 0- I$(O) I&

+I&

+ I:da

It can be seen that, even for hovering mode, the

equations of motion are inherently nonlinear. The flight
control problem here is to design the control force
U, and the control moment U, so as to nullify the
velocity and body rate of the flight vehicle and at the
same time to track the attitude command [c,' qO] in

defined as

- r;s(Qo)rMw

(2)
the
the
(3a)
(3b)

Eqs. (1) and Eqs. (3) have equivalent dynamics, but the
equilibrium points are different. The equilibrium point
of Eqs. (3) is (a,w)=(O,O,O,O,O,O)
, 'while the
equilibrium
point
of
Eqs. .
(I)
is
(~::,n:)=(U~,v,.w,.p,,e,,%)
. According to the

the presence of the external disturbance.

For notational convenience, let the inertial axes be
defined as the desired orientations of the body axes,
then attitude control is to match the body axes with the
inertial axes, and at thc same time, to minimize the
velocity error and body rate error produced by the
disturbances. We propose the following measure to
quantify these control goals:

1
L

(:pom,or~)l'2

1
J

where pm,pm, and p,, are three weighting coefficients;

quantify how small is
the terms m p r u and o'I,o
the tracking error. The geodesic metric D ( n , I , ) ,

values of CO and R,, several flight control modes

can be defined, and the details can be found in [13].

4407

control system to have the capability to withstand the

performance degradation caused by all possible types of
wind gust. Using nonlinear H- control, we can allow
uwand L, to be varying, while ensuring the satisfaction
of closed-loop Lz -gain being lower than y in the
presence of wind gust, as will be discussed in the next
section.

which measures the distance between ll ( the rotation

matrix from inertial axes to body axes) and the identity
matrix I s , is defined as

w---)

D(~,I,)=ZXCCOS
- 1+troce(n)

(4e)

It can be checked that D(n, I , ) = 0 when n=I, If we

align the desired vehicle attitude with the inertial
reference frame and regard the deviation of the body
frame from the inertial reference frame as perturbation,
the purpose of robust control is to keepD(n,l,) as
small as possible, i.e., to keep the perturbed body frame
close to the inertial reference frame under the action of
exogenous disturbance. Expressing D ( n , I , ) in terms
the
quaternion
components,
yields
of
D(n,I,) = 2arccosl~l. The definition of h, implies that
hl=O if and only if (U, m, n)=(O,O,r) which is exactly
the design goal of hover control mode. Hence the
control problem is to make h, as small as possible in the
presence of disturbance d, while keeping the control
expenditure U acceptable.
Eq. (4c) and Eq.(4d) can all be recast into the
following standard state-space form:

3. Nonlinear H, Hover Controller

The objective of hover control is to nullify the
velocity and body rate of the flight vehicle, and at the
same time to maneuver it to the desired attitude. We will
show that under nonlinear H , control structure, the
hovering attitude control can be separated from the
hovering velocity control. The existence of a nonlinear
H , controller satisfying the L2 gain constraint

rn

Jz'zdt < y 2 J(d'd)dt ,Vd E &

(7)

is equivalent to the condition that there exists V (x)>O

satisfying the following Hamilton-Jacobi
differential inequality (HJPDr):

partial

i=f(x)+g,(x)d+g*fx)u

(5)

z = y ]

where x r

=[U'

E'

q m']

/(x)<O,

If such V ( x ) exists, the desired controller can be found

as

is the state variable

and u=[u:,u:]' is the nonlinear H - command of

control force and moment to he determined in the next
section.
Disturbance Model

(9)

-Wind gust

. Detailed derivations
L

The disturbances d = [ d z d:Ir = [ d,

d? d,

[=I:

of this result can he found, for example, in Ref.[14]

3.1 Six Degree-of-Freedom Hover Controller

d, d. d,IT in Eq. (5) are the applied forces and

moments resulting from the unmodeled aerodynamics
such as wind gust and vortex shedding. The main effect
of wind gust is to cause a random fluctuation of
helicopter's velocity. The velocity uncertainties du and
d m caused by wind gust can be well modeled by the
outputs of some shaping filters with white noise as the
input
source.
Accordingly,
the
disturbance
d = [d:

V(x,)=O

Substituting the corresponding f(x), gl(x), g2(x),

and hdx) from Eq.(4c) and Eq.(4d) into Eq.(8), we
obtain the corresponding HJPDI for complete six
degree-of-freedom hover control mode:

d l r caused by wind gust can be presented as

-m,S(m+Am)
0

m,s(u)

-S(m Am)I,

I[""]

(6)

Am

where the velocity increments AU and A@ depend

on the intensity (uw) and the turbulence scale length
( L J of wind gust. uw and L, are the main statistical
characteristics describing the behavior of wind gust;
different values of uwand L, result in different types of
wind gust. However, since the length L, and the
intensity uwof wind gust encountered during flight can
not be predicted in advance, it is necessary for a flight

Motivated from the linear result, we search for a

possible quadratic solution in the form

4488

where C,, CO,C,, and C, are scalar constants to be

determined. By substituting Eq.(ll) into Eq.(lO), it can
be shown that Eq.(lO) is satisfied and the positiveness
of V is ensured if

where the constants C,

as

C,

and C, are determined

Once the ranges for these constants are found, the

control can be determined from Eq.(9) and Eq.(15) as
= -(

c,w + C_&)/p"I

(17)
It is worth noting that this attitude controller obtained
from three degree-of-freedom attitude dynamics is
exactly the same as the attitude controller in Eq.(l3b)
obtained from complete six degree-of-freedom
dynamics.
U-

; however, the above inequalities do not necessarily

determine the lowest bounds for each coefficient. After
having obtained the solution Y ( u , ~ , E , w ) we
,
can
compute the desired control force and moment for the
hover control mode by substituting Eq.(ll) into Eq.(9):

3.3 Three Degree-of-Freedom Velocity Controller

In this part, only velocity dynamics from Eq.(4c)

are considered:
U =-S(w)o+m;'l,d, +m;'I,u,
(183)
=

fW + g,( x ) d + g, (x)u

(18b)

..

The third IiJPDl to be solved is formed by substituting

above f ( x ) , g , ( x ) , g 2 ( x ) , and b,(x) into Eq. (8).
The candidate solution for the resulting HJPDI is chosen
as
V(x)=C,m,o~'o/2
(20)
At the first glance, the velocity dynamics 0 interacts
with the attitude dynamics w via the term -S(w)u in
Eq.(l8a), however, this term disappears during the
formation of HJPDI because of the property of
cross-product
matrix: ( I 80)' (-s(o)a)= ~ , m , d(-s(o)u)= o

This simple proportional feedback control can

guarantee that the nonlinear flight control system is
stable in the sense of Lyapunov and has L2 gain lower
than y, as well. Indeed, the resulting controller ensures
more than Lyapunov's stability. Inspecting the penalized
output z in Eq.(4d) with control U given by Eq.(13), we
can find that the only state for z = 0 is the equilibrium
state (u,u)=(O,O), i.e., z is zero-state observable.
Therefore, from the LaSalle's theorem the closed loop
system with d = 0 is asymptotically stable.

which makes the final

independent of o:

3.2 Three Degree-of-Freedom Attitude Controller

U,

In this part only attitude dynamics from Eq.(4c) are

considered
TI +S(&))U/2

I[z]=;'
df

-I;S(U)I,O
-8d2

]+[:,]du+[:,]~.

= f ( x ) + g , ( x ) d +g,(x)u

(144
( 1 4 ~

The second MJPDl to be solved is formed by substituting

above fb), s b ) , g,(*), and 4 ( x ) into Eq. (8).
The candidate solution for the associated HJPDI is
chosen as

Y(x)=C,or'l,w/2+C_uTI,&/2+2Cn(l-~)>0
(15)

4489

velocity

controller

us

=-c,u/p:

where

This velocity control ug is identical to that in Eq.(l3a)

obtained by considering the whole six degree-of-freedom
equations of motion.
Combining the results of section 3.2 and 3.3 reveals
the fact that the six degree-of-freedom H, hover
control design can he achieved from two independent
loops each with three degree-of-fieedom dynamics: the
velocity control loop wherein only velocity dynamics
need be considered, and the attitude contrnl loop wherein
only attitude dynamics need be considered.

4.

Case Study: Westland Lynx Helicopter

only velocity dynamics are considered, and the attitude

control loop, wherein only attitude dynamics are
considered.

The nonlinear H., control will be applied to the

Lynx hepicopter whose configuration data are listed in
Table 1. The hover condition is to set
Z,=[U, V, &]=[O
0 O] (m/sec),and

no=[ea h]= [O o

5. Remarks

01

(rad/sec).The upper
bound of the L,-gain is selected to y =2; the weighting
coefficients p,, p,, and p,, in Eq.(4d) are all set to 1.
(A) Robustness against Wind Gust

The inherent robust property of the nonlinear H..

control is to guarantee that the system LI-gain, i.e., the
disturbance attenuation level nzll, /lldllL,, can be always
kept below the specified value y under the action of
arbitrary exogenous disturbance d E L, . The Lz-gain
response is depicted in Figure 1, where it is observed
that the Lz-gain of the closed-loop system is kept lower
than 0.943 for all possible wind gust scale length Lw.

The topic of decoupling hover controller addressed

in this paper has not been discussed before in the
literature. It is noted that this decoupling controller
design under nonlinear H- framework is not based on
the assumption of small perturbation, instead, the initial
perturbation may be far from the equilibrium states. This
decoupling property which is valid for nonlinear
dynamics is different to linear flight control design
wherein longitudinal control can be decoupled from
lateral control only when vehicles angular rate is small.

(B) Verification of Global Asymptotic Stability

The property of nonlinear H., flight control
guarantees that all the perturbed states eventually
converge to the equilibrium states, irrespective of the
magnitude of perturbation. T o illustrate this property
numerically, we release the six-DOF nonlinear motion at
several initial conditions [u(O) v(0) w(O)] that are very
far from the equilibrium state [0 0 01 to make sure that
the convergence is not merely local. The results are
shown in Figure 2. It is observed that all the four cases
converge rapidly to hr=O, which implies the equilibrium
state [U o]=[o 01.
(C) Verification of Decoupling Controller Design

As has been shown in Section 3, the hovering

attitude control loop and the hovering velocity control
loop can be designed independently under the framework
of nonlinear H., control. T o verify this decoupling
property numerically, we intentionally disable the
hovering velocity controller, and let only nonlinear Hattitude controller obtained from Eq.(17) remain
operational. The result is shown in Figure 3 where the
initial perturbation is set to [u(o) v(0) w(O)]=[20 20
201 ( d s e c ) and [p(O) q(0) 4 0 ) ] =[0.5 0.5 0.51
(radlsec). As expected, the uncontrolled velocity loop is
divergent, but the attitude converges rapidly by the
attitude controller. On the other hand, we disable the
attitude controller, and let only velocity controller
obtained from Eq.(21) remain operational. The result is
shown in Figure 4 where we can see that the velocity
response converges rapidly without being influenced by
the divergence of attitude dynamics. This means that
there is no interaction between velocity control loop and
attitude control loop, and hence the six-DOF nonlinear
H. hover control design can be divided into two
independent loops: the velocity control loop, wherein

4490

References
[I] M. D. Takahashi, Synthesis and Evaluation of an
I> Control Law for a Hovering Helicopter, AIAA
Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics. Vol.
16, No. 3, 1993.
[Z] J.C. Morris, M. Van Nieuwstadt, and P. Bendotti,
Identification and Control of a Model Helicopter in
Hover. Proceedines of American Control
Confeience, Vo1.2, pP.1238-1242, 1994.
[3] M. Trentini, and, J.K. Pieper, Model-Following
Control of a Helicopter in Hover, Proceedings of
IEEE Conference on Control Applications, pp.7-12,
1996.
[4] Dudgeon, J.W. Graham, and J.J. Gribble,
Helicopter Attitude Command Attitude Hold Using
Individual Channel Analysis and Design, AIAA
Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, V01.20,
NoS. pp.962-971, 1997.
l 5 l E Lin. W. Zhane. and R.D. Brandt. Robust
Hovering Control -Af a PVTOL Aircraft, IEEE
Transactions on Control Systems Technology, Vo1.7,
No.3, pp.343-351, 1999.
[6] P. Bendotti, and J.C. Morris, Robust Hover Control
for a Model Helicopter, Proceedings of American
Control Conference, Vol.1, pp.682-687, 1995.
[7] J.K. Pieper, Application of SLMC: TRC Control of
a Helicopter in Hover, Proceedings of American
Control Conference, Vol.2, pp.1191-1195, 1995.
[SIR. Mahony, T. Hamel, and A. Dzul, Hover Control
via Lyapunov Control for an Autonomous Model
Helicopter, Proceedings of Conference on Decision
and Control, Vo1.4, pp.3490-3495, 1999.
[9]R. Mahony, and R. Lozano, Almost Exact Path
Tracking Control for an Autonomous Helicopter in
Hover Manoeuvers, Proceedings of IEEE
International
Conference on Robotics and
Automation, Vo1.2, pp.1245-1250, 2000.
[IO] Y.Patel, and P.R. Smith, Translational Motion of
Vertical Takeoff Aircraft Using Nonlinear Dynamic
Inversion, AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control, and
Dynamics,Vo1.21,No.l,pp.179-182,
1998.
[ 111 K.L. Hicks, and A.A. Rodriguez, Decoupling
L

Compensation for the Apache Helicopter,"

Procoedings of Conference on Decision and Control,
V01.2,pp.1551-1555, 1996.
1121 Padfield, G D., "Helicopter Flight Dynamics: The
Theory and Application of Flying Qualities and
Simulation Modeling", AIAA, 1996.
[I31 C.D. Yang, and C.C. Kung, "Nonlinear H,
Flight Control of General Six Degree-of-Freedom
Motions," AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control, and
Dynamics, Vo1.23, No.2, pp.278-288,2000,
[14] Van der Schaft, A. J., "L, -gain Analysis of
Nonlinear Systems and Nonlinear H, Control,"
IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Vol. 37,
pp. 770-784, 1992.

2.5

x 10'

h, =

2 l i\

I\

-m,u~u+-_oT~,o+~~ccosl~~~

1.5.

! '

Table 1. Configuration data (SI unit) for Westland Lynx

Figure 2. Time responses of hl to different initial
conditions.

20.01 I
20.05,
I

L
-

0.1

"0

0.3

0.2

20.151

0.4

1,

IPlane

I I,

0.5,

Fan

sfi=i.io7

Engine

ph =-o.osu
r..=O.I

0.1

0.2

0.3

I,

0.2 0.3
timeisec lmemi)

0.1

0.4

0.5''

0.2
0.3
time(sec intewl)

0.1

0.4

= 4591

r.,=0.6

0.787

.I

0.765

0.4

Figure 3. Hovering attitude control.

K, = 10000 R, = 35.63 ,Q

r..=0.025

0.5;

= 7.66 S,D= 1.197 a,&= -0.0175

19.9

i
J

- LO

-a"::0.55
0

0.1

'

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

fjF-0.4

rn

0.5

Figure I . Variation of L2 gain due to change of

turbulence scale length.

4491

0.1
0.2
03
,irne(rec inleival)

0.4

0.35
0

0.1
0.2 0.3
urnqsso hteral)

Figure 4. Hovering velocity control

0.4