Performance-Boosting Attitude Control for 2-DOF Helicopter Applications via Surface Stabilization Approach

This study solves the attitude stabilization problem of 2-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) helicopters by robustly assigning the variable-performance to the closed-loop system in the presence of the model-plant mismatches and load variations. The proposed approach reformulates the original problem to a surface stabilization one which yields three contributions: a) the proposed attitude velocity observer forms a conventional Luenberger-type observer incorporating the parameter-independence and estimation gains specifically designed for causing the pole-zero cancellation, b) the pole-zero cancellation velocity control loop makes it possible to accomplish the surface stabilization task with the first-order closed-loop order, and c) the closed-loop analysis results demonstrate the attractive properties of the exponential performance recovery and convergence. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is verified using the experimental platform provided by the Quanser AERO.