Linear Parameter Varying Control of a Quadrotor

Samarathunga L.M.D. Rangajeeva, Member, IEEE, and James F. Whidborne, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractThis paper describes a Linear Parameter Varying
(LPV) controller design for a quadrotor vehicle. The controller
synthesis requires the LPV plant model which is obtained by
linearisation of the modelling equations, to be in an afne form.
However, the LPV representation of the quadrotor dynamic
is not afne; hence it has been transformed into to a convex
polytopic form using Tensor Product (TP) transformation. The
H

self gain scheduling control method has been applied to

obtain a LPV controller which is tested on a simplied nonlinear
model of the quadrotor. The LPV controller performance was
compared with a separate H

controller. The LPV controller

exhibited signicant close tracking capabilities with respect to
the H

controller.
Index TermsQuadrotor vehicle, Linear parameter varying,
Tensor product model transformation, self gain scheduled
I. INTRODUCTION
T
HE quadrotor is an aircraft in which lift is generated by
four rotors symmetrically xed around its centre. The
required ight-manoeuvres (i.e. yawing, rolling and pitching)
and the vertical or lateral ight are realised by indepen-
dently varying speeds of the four rotors. Moreover not only
it is capable of performing Vertical Take-Off and Landing
(VTOL), also has a simpler conguration for a compact me-
chanical design. Therefore the quadrotor vehicle has become
an attractive candidate for small scale and medium scale
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for applications such as
reconnaissance, search, rescue and surveillance. However the
dynamics of this aerial vehicle represents a marginally stable
system and an active control system is essential to stabilise
it.
Though various control laws both linear and nonlinear have
been tested out on the quadrotor, a fully autonomous control-
ling of an quadrotor poses a tough challenge to control system
designers. As nonlinear control laws sliding mode control
[1], adaptive back stepping control [2] and inversion method
[3] have been studied. These methods have demonstrated
very promising performance and robustness. Nevertheless,
there are practical issues in applying those techniques on
the real quadrotor. For an instance, the inversion method
causes actuator saturation in aggressive manoeuvres and in the
back stepping method it assumes quick switch over between
controllers in real time. With regard to linear methods, control
laws such as PID, LQR and H

have been investigated. It was

found, the performances are limited to the hover condition,
as nominal design point for the controller is hover. When
the UAV departs from hover or undergoes large perturbations
S.L.M.D. Rangajeeva is with the Department of Mechanical and Manu-
facturing Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Ruhuna, Galle,
80000 Sri Lanka. e-mail:rangajeewa@mme.ruh.ac.lk
J.F. Whidborne is with the Department of Aerospace Sciences, School
of Engineering, Craneld University Bedford, MK43 0AL UK. e-
mail:j.f.whidborne@craneld.ac.uk
control has been lost [4]. In order to extend the ight envelope
a common approach is gain scheduling. In which several linear
models of the quadrotor are obtained for different trim points
and then number of Liner Time Invariant (LTI) controllers
are derived for each point. As operating conditions vary,
the global controller is estimated by interpolating gains of
the local controllers. Even though this has been successfully
implemented in many engineering applications, there is no
guarantee for the performance, robustness and nominal sta-
bility of the control design [5].
The Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) technique has been
introduced as an alternative gain scheduling process. As it
name implies the plant model and the controller are still linear,
but the dynamics of the plant model as well as the controller
depend on some time varying parameters whose values are
unknown in advance. However, those parameters values can
be measured in real time, thus both the plant and the controller
are changing as a function of operating conditions. This type
of control strategy ensures required performance, robustness
and stability along all possible trajectories of the parameters
and it has been proved theoretically [6]. The LPV controller
synthesis requires an afne dynamic system that can be con-
verted into a convex polytopic form. However the quadrotor
LPV plant model is not afne and as a result an innite
number of Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs) are required to
determine the controller. In order to overcome this difculty,
recently proposed Tensor Product (TP) model transformation
was applied to convert the nonafne system into a convex
polytopic form.
This paper presents a designing of a LPV controller with the
use of TPtransformation. Further as a means of comparing
the performance an H

controller has also been designed.

The new controller has been tested and compared in Simulink
environment of MATLAB.
II. DYNAMIC MODEL OF THE QUADROTOR
A simplied non-linear dynamic model for commercially
available Draganyer XPro which is owned by Craneld
University was developed for this study. The basic layout of
the vehicle is shown in Fig.1. It consists of four equal in
length carbon bre arms which are connected to the central
body. At the end of each arm a rotor having radius r
a
is
attached. The front and rear rotors revolve at angular speeds

1
and
2
in counterclockwise (CCW) direction generating
thrusts of
1
and
2
; while left and right rotate at
3
and
4
in clockwise (CW) direction generating thrusts of
3
and
4
.
In a hover ight all rotors have same angular speeds to
generate same amount of thrust to balance the weight. Since
the pairs of rotors have opposite sense of rotational directions
the net imbalance of the reaction torques is zero. In order to
2011 6th International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems, ICIIS 2011, Aug. 16-19, 2011, Sri Lanka
483
978-1-61284-0035-4/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

xb
yb
zb
xe
ye
ze
O1
1
2
4
3
Front
Rear Right
Left
p /
q /
r /
Fig. 1. The Quadrotor
perform a vertical ight from a trimmed hovering condition,
the total thrust () need to be augmented by increasing speed
of each rotor by an equal amount. For a forward ight
(or a sidewards ight) a certain amount of pitch angle
(or a bank angle ) needs to be reached and maintained
it. With regard to attitude control for an example to pitch-
up the speed (hence the thrust) of front rotor is increased
while that of the rear is reduced by a same amount. So
a pitching moment M is produced while keeping the total
thrust remains unchanged. Rolling also can be performed in
analogous manner by varying the thrust generated by left and
right side rotors and creating a rolling moment L. In yawing
manoeuvre or to alter the azimuth angle it is necessary
to create an imbalance of torque while keeping the total
thrust intact. This is materialised by, increasing(or decreasing)
angular speeds of the rear rotor and the front rotor while
decreasing (or increasing) speeds of left and right by a same
amount. This generates a yawing moment N.
A. Equations of Motion
The equations of motion (EoM) of the quadrotor have been
discussed in number of papers [1], [2], thus a detail discussion
is not included here. In order to develop the EoM, a body axis
system (x
b
y
b
z
b
) and an earth referential (x
e
y
e
z
e
) are set up
as shown in Fig. 1. When the context is clear subscript b or
e will be omitted. The vehicle has a total mass of m
b
and
the total weight m
b
g acts at the centre O
1
in z
e
direction.
Further due to the symmetry of the conguration the inertia
about x
b
and y
b
has a same value of I
x
, the inertia about z
b
has a value of I
z
that is equal to 2I
x
and all the product of
inertia are zero.
In addition to attitude (i.e. , , and ), angular velocities
about body axes: roll ratep (around x
b
), pitch rateq (around
y
b
), yaw rater (aroundz
b
), linear velocities with respect to
earth axes: U
x
(along x
e
), U
y
(along y
e
), U
z
(along z
e
) and
position: x
e
, y
e
, z
e
in earth referential are required to fully
dene the dynamic behaviour of the quadrotor. Hence, taking
p , q , r , , , , U
x
, U
y
, U
z
, x
e
, y
e
, and z
e
as variables
of the state vector x; four control inputs , L, M , and N as
variables of the control vector u the equations of motion can
be rewritten in a form as:
p = f
1
(x, u) = k
3
qr +L,
q = f
2
(x, u) = k
3
pr +M,
r = f
3
(x, u) = N,

= f
4
(x, u) = p cos q sin ,

= f
5
(x, u) =
p sin
cos
+
q cos
cos
,

= f
6
(x, u) = p sin tan +q cos tan +r,

U
x
= f
7
(x, u) = k
1
U
2
x
cos sin ,

U
y
= f
8
(x, u) = k
1
U
2
y
(sin ),

U
z
= f
9
(x, u) = g cos cos ,
x
e
= f
10
(x, u) = U
x
,
y
e
= f
11
(x, u) = U
y
,
z
e
= f
12
(x, u) = U
z,
(1)
where k
1
=
A
D
C
D
2m
b
, k
3
= 1
I
z
I
x
and A
D
= 4r
2
a
, C
D

the drag coefcient, density of air. Also x and u denote the

elements of state vector x = (p , q , r , , . . . , y
e
, z
e
)
T
, and
the control vector u = ( , L , M , N )
T
. In this quadrotor
dynamic model the output vector y is taken as: y = x.
III. LPV CONTROLLER DESIGN
The state space representation of a LTI system is in a form
of:
x(t) = Ax(t) +Bu(t),
y(t) = Cx(t) +Du(t), (2)
where A, B, C, and D denote the State space matrix, the Input
matrix, the Output matrix, and the Feed forward matrix re-
spectively and these matrices are assumed to be time invariant.
In general dynamic systems behave in nonlinear manner and
above LTI representation is obtained by linearisation (using
methods such as Jacobian linearisation, function substitution
or state transformation) of the modelling equations of the
system at an equilibrium point of the operating range. Linear
control methods can be applied to stabilise a LTI system,
but performance of such a linear controller deteriorates as
the actual system deviates from the equilibrium point. This
is primarily due to fact that in reality the system matrices
A, B, C, D are not constant and continuously change with
time. Even though the gain scheduling controlling method
could be applied, there is no theoretical justication.
To take into account such variations, the system matrices
are described in terms of a time dependent parameter vector
p(t) which is unknown in advance, but can be measured in
real time. This yields the LPV model of the system as follows
[6]:
x(t) = A(p(t))x(t) +B(p(t))u(t),
y(t) = C(p(t))x(t) +D(p(t))u(t). (3)
In addition to incorporate the parameter dependency into
the controller a new parameter dependent LPV controller is
dened by:
x
K
(t) = A
K
(p(t))x
K
(t) +B
K
(p(t))e(t),
u(t) = C
K
(p(t))x
K
(t) +D
K
(p(t))e(t), (4)
2011 6th International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems, ICIIS 2011, Aug. 16-19, 2011, Sri Lanka
484
where the subscript K stands for the controller and e(t) is
the error signal that is the difference between the reference
signal R
ref
(t) and the system output y(t). Now the LPV
plant model and the controller are parameter dependent, in
the gain scheduling process both systems automatically get
updated depending on the operating conditions. This ensures
stability, performance and robustness of the LPV controller
for all possible trajectories of p(t) [6]. For convenience,
in following sections, when the context does not lead to a
confusion, the dependence of x , y , u , e , p on t will be
dropped.
A. Controller Synthesis
The LPV controller is derived using Bounded Real Lemma
(BRL) with the notion of quadratic H

performance [6].
Given a closed loop (cl) LPV system (i.e. combination of the
LPV controller and the LPV system model) having state space
matrices A
cl
(p), B
cl
(p), C
cl
(p), and D
cl
(p), the system has
quadratic H

performance if and only if there exists a

single positive denite matrix P such that:
_
_
A
T
cl
(p)P +PA
cl
(p) PB
cl
(p) C
T
cl
(p)
B
T
cl
(p)P I D
T
cl
(p)
C
cl
(p) D
cl
(p) I
_
_
< 0, (5)
for all admissible values of the parameter vector p. Then
the Lyapunov function V (x) = x
T
Px establishes global
(asymptotic) stability and the L
2
gain between the input and
output is bounded by . That is:
y
2
< u
2
, (6)
for along all possible parameter trajectories of p. Therefore,
the quadratic H

performance requires an existence of a

xed quadratic Lyapunov function for the entire operating
range [6]. Even though the estimation of the controller is
limited resolving the LMI given in (5), it generates an innite
number of LMIs to cover all possible trajectories of p. The
concept of an Afne Polytopic LPV plant has been introduced
to overcome this difculty.
1) Afne Polytopic LPV Systems: As outlined in [5], sup-
pose in a LPV system that p(t) = [p
1
(t), p
2
(t), . . . , p
N
(t)]
R
N
be a vector of time-varying real parameters. It is also as-
sumed that each parameter p
i
(t) lies between known extreme
values p
i
and p
i
, i.e. p
i
(t) [p
i
, p
i
] and p(t) lies in a polytope
with vertices
1
,
2
, . . . ,
m
, p(t) , m = 2
N
. In an
afne LPV model the system matrices S(p), which are linear
function of the time varying parameters, can be written as a
convex combination of the vertex matrices of the parameter
polytope [6]:
S(p) =
_
A(p) B(p)
C(p) D(p)
_
=
m

i=1

i
(p)
_
A(
i
) B(
i
)
C(
i
) D(
i
)
_
,
(7)
m

i=1

i
(p) = 1.
It can be proved (5) holds for all possible p(t), if and
only if it holds at the vertices
i
for i = 1, . . . , m [6].
Therefore, the innite number of LMIs to determine the
LPV controller can be eliminated thanks to the convexity
of the afne LPV system. The LPV controller synthesis is
implemented in MATLAB as a function hinfgs.
B. Linearisation of the EoM
In order to apply the LPV controller synthesis, a linear
system model of the quadrotor is generated by linearising (1)
at an equilibrium point of general trimmed forward ight.
In such a ight condition, the vehicle motion is completely
dened by , , U
x
, U
y
, U
z
, x
e
, y
e
, and z
e
while all body
rates p , q , r and azimuth angle must be zero. The linear
model of the quadrotor is in a form of (2). Since the desired
output vector y is equal to the x, C is an identity matrix
while D is a null matrix. The system matrices A and B are
obtained by using following partial derivative formulae:
A
ij
=
_
f
i
x
j
_
x= x u= u
,
B
ij
=
_
f
i
u
j
_
x= x u= u
,
(8)
where x = ( 0, 0 , 0 , , , 0 , U
x
, U
y
, 0, 0 , 0 , 0 )
T
and
u = (, 0 , 0 , 0 )
T
are the state vector and the control vector
at an equilibrium point. It should be noted that the variables
U
z
, x
e
, y
e
and z
e
are taken as zero since these are independent
of system matrices A and B. Equation (8) gives:
A =
_

_
0
33
0
33
0
33
0
33
P 0
33
0
33
0
33
0
33
Q R 0
33
0
33
0
33
I
33
0
33
_

_
,
B =
_

_
0
31
I
33
0
31
0
33
S 0
33
0
31
0
33
_

_
,
(9)
where with notation s sin , c cos and t tan:
P =
_
_
_
1 0 0
0
1
c
0
0 t 1
_
_
_, R =
_
_
2U
x
k
1
0 0
0 2U
y
k
1
0
0 0 0
_
_
,
Q =
_
_
ss cc 0
c 0 0
cs cs 0
_
_
, S =
_
_
cs
s
cc
_
_
.
Therefore system matrices are function of the state variables
and continuously change with time. In such an occasion; the
system can be put into the LPV form as:
_
x = A(p)x +B(p)u,
y = x,
(10)
where p = [U
x
, U
y
, , , ] is the time varying parameter
vector. Further, it is evident that A and B are not linear
functions of time varying parameters, hence the quadrotor
LPV model is not afne.
2011 6th International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems, ICIIS 2011, Aug. 16-19, 2011, Sri Lanka
485
C. Tensor Product (TP) Model Transformation
Despite the fact that many control problems can be for-
mulated into the afne LPV form, still there are substantial
amount of nonafne systems. With reference to (10) quadrotor
dynamics falls into the nonafne form and has to be converted
into a convex form in order to obtain a LPV controller
with nite number of LMIs. For this conversion process
recently proposed Tensor Product model transformation has
been applied. As explained in [7], this is based on Higher
Order Singular Value Decomposition (HOSVD) of tensors.
The S(p(t)) of a non-afne LPV model can be written as
a real (R) matrix:
S(p(t)) =
_
A(p(t)) B(p(t))
C(p(t)) D(p(t))
_
R
(n+q)(n+m)
, (11)
where n, m, q are the number of states, inputs and outputs of
the system. Also, let p(t) = [p
1
(t), p
2
(t), . . . , p
N
(t)] R
N
be
a vector of time-varying real parameters. As p
i
(t) [p
i
, p
i
],
the parameter space is, = [p
1
, p
1
][p
2
, p
2
]. . .[p
N
, p
N
].
Now, the is discretised over a large number of points and a
grid LPV model is obtained by expressing the S(p(t)) at
each grid point. Then, the discretised system matrices are
stored into a tensor S
D
R
M
1
M
2
...M
N
(n+q)(n+m)
.
The M
1
, M
2
, . . . , M
N
are the number of grid lines dened on
each direction of the parameter vector p(t). After, HOSVD is
applied on rst N dimensions of the tensor S
D
. In this process
it is discarded all zero or small singular values
k
and their
corresponding singular vectors in all 1, . . . , N dimensions [7].
This results a tensor S and a set of matrices U
1
, U
2
, . . . , U
N
such that S
D
S U
1
U
2
. . . U
N
.
Then the LTI vertices S
r
R
(n+q)(n+m)
are extracted
from the tensor S having the size of I
1
. . . I
N
(n+q)
(n +m) as:
S
r
=
_
A
r
B
r
C
r
D
r
_
= S
(I
1
,I
2
,...,I
N
)
, (12)
where r = ordering(I
1
, I
2
, . . . , I
N
), r = 1 to R and R =

N
1
I
n
. The matrices U
1
, U
2
, . . . , U
N
contain the continuous
weighting functions for one bounded variable. For an example
U
n
R
M
n
I
n
is made of continuous weighting functions
w
n,j
(p
n
(t)) R
M
n
, j = 1, . . . , I
n
, and I
n
is the number
of weighting functions used in the n
th
dimension of the
parameter vector p(t). The weighting function w
n,j
(p
n
(t))
is the j
th
weighting function dened on the n
th
dimension of
the and p
n
(t) is the n
th
element of the vector p(t). Then
the weighting functions at each vertex are dened as:
w
r
(p(t)) =
N

n=1
w
n,j
(p
n
(t)). (13)
The whole point of the TP transformation is to nd a LTI
vertex system S
r
and weighting functions w
r
(p(t)) such that
the S(p(t)) in (11) can be expressed as:
R

r=1
w
r
(p(t))S
r
. (14)
Further, the convex combination of S
r
LTI vertex system is
guaranteed by the following conditions [7]:
n [1, N], j [1, I
n
], p
n
(t) : w
n,j
(p
n
(t)) [0, 1],
n [1, N], p
n
(t) :
I
n

j=1
w
n,j
(p
n
(t)) = 1,
r [1, R], p(t) : w
r
(p(t)) [0, 1], (15)
p(t) :
R

r=1
w
r
(p(t)) = 1.
Therefore with the TP method a given LPV system S(p(t))
can be transformed into a convex hull of LTI vertex system S
r
for any p(t) and the LPV controller synthesis is readily
applicable. Nevertheless the TP type convex polytopic system
representation is an approximation and the error is dened
as [7]:
_
_
_
_
_
S(p(t))
R

r=1
w
r
(p(t))S
r
_
_
_
_
_
. (16)
D. TP Transformation of the Quadrotor LPV Model
As described in the previous section TP transformation
involves four key steps: (i) Dening the parameter space and
discretised it over a large number of points, (ii) Express the
LPV plant S(p(t)) at each grid points to obtain the tensor
S
D
, (iii) Carryout HOSVD on the S
D
to obtain a tensor S
and a set of matrices U
1
, U
2
, . . . , U
N
, and (iv) Extraction of
LTI vertices S
r
and weighting functions w
r
(p(t)) from the
S and the set of matrices respectively.
1) Step (i): As per (9) the quadrotor LPV model is a
function of ve time varying parameters. However, in a
forward ight without any climb rate in z
e
(i.e.

U
z
= 0),
the relation f
9
(x, u) in (1) yields:
=
g
cos cos
. (17)
Thus, there are only four independent time varying parameters
and their ranges have been specied as: -0.4 rad to + 0.4
rad for and , -5 ms
1
to +5 ms
1
for U
x
and U
y
.
These ranges have been selected considering the fact that
the quadrotor is not designed to operate linear velocities
higher than 5 ms
1
, as it becomes extremely uncontrollable
[8]. Also a moderate size of a parameter space helps to
limit the computational loads associate with the TP trans-
formation [7]. So the parameter space is specied as:
[0.4 0.4] [0.4 0.4] [5 5] [5 5], which has been
discretised with a sampling grid of 300 300 200 200.
2) Step (ii) and Step (iii): An open source MATLAB TP-
toolbox [9] has been used to execute both of these steps.
During the HOSVD, it has been received; ve singular values
in each , directions and two singular values in each U
x
,
U
y
directions. Without discarding any of the singular values,
the TP-toolbox has given the tensor S with dimensions 5
5 2 2 and the set of matrices.
2011 6th International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems, ICIIS 2011, Aug. 16-19, 2011, Sri Lanka
486
-0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
Angle (rad)
M
a
g
n
i
t
u
d
e

o
f

w
e
i
g
h
t
i
n
g

f
u
n
c
t
i
o
n
s


w
11
w
12
w
13
w
14
w
15
Student Version of MATLAB
Fig. 2. Continuous weighting functions for : w
1,i
((t))
3) Step (iv): A TP type convex polytopic LPV model
with 100 (5 5 2 2) LTI vertices (S
r
) has been
extracted from the S. Then the weighting functions were
extracted from the matrices U
1
, U
2
, . . . , U
N
. In the convex
polytopic representation, there are ve weighting functions
(w
1,i
((t)) : i = 1, . . . , 5) for the parameter , another ve
weighting functions (w
2,j
((t)) : j = 1, . . . , 5) for the param-
eter , two weighting functions (w
3,k
(U
x
(t)) : k = 1, . . . , 2)
for the parameter U
x
and again two weighting functions
(w
4,l
(U
y
(t)) : l = 1, . . . , 2) for the parameter U
y
. Fig. 2
shows variations of the continuous weighting functions for
over the its range -0.4 rad to +0.4 rad. The plot demonstrates
that the continuous weighting functions meet the convexity
requirements outlined in (15).
Now the original non afne quadrotor LPV model in (10)
can be re-written in TP type convex polytopic form as:
x=
5

i=1
5

j=1
2

k=1
2

l=1
(w
1,i
.w
2,j
.w
3,k
.w
4,l
).(A
i,j,k,l
+B
i,j,k,l
),
y=x, (18)
where A
i,j,k,l
and B
i,j,k,l
are obtained from the LTI vertices
S
r
. This new TP-convex polytopic model has been compared
with the original LPV model of the quadrotor given in (10)
over randomly selected 2000 points in the parameter space
where the maximum error and the mean error were found
to be 1.632e-005 and 7.71e-006 respectively. Hence, over the
dened parameter space the actual quadrotor LPV model
is approximately equal to (18).
E. LPV Controller determination
Having derived the convex polytopic form of the LPV
quadrotor model, the controller now can be determined by
solving the LMI given in (5) at each LTI vertex S
r
. In practise,
the problem is put into the standard regulator form [10] as
shown in Fig. 3 and desired performance requirements of the
controller are specied through weighting functions W
1
and
W
2
. In this controller design, performance boundaries have
been imposed on the sensitivity function S and the controller

uadrotor 1
mode|
L

V

c
o
n
t
r
o
|
|
e
r

r
e

f
|
|
t
e
r


W1
W2
21
22
kef.
State vector
p(t)
I
L
M
N
-
+
Fig. 3. Standard regulator form
outputs to achieve good tracking capabilities while avoiding
actuator saturation.
This is known as the SKS problem formulation and the
intention is to nd a controller such that [10]:
_
_
_
_
W
1
S
W
2
KS
_
_
_
_

< . (19)
Also a prelter has been added to remove the parameter
dependency of the matrix B, because it is a requirement of
the controller synthesis [6]. The following weighting functions
and the prelter were found to be yielded the intended
performance:
W
1
=
2
0.7s+1
,
W
2
=
10
5
s+0.01
310
6
s+0.3
,
W
prefilter
=
1000
s+1000
.
(20)
The structure shown in Fig. 3 was built in MATLAB and using
the hinfgs routine, a LPV controller with quadratic H

performance = 76.7 has been obtained. Despite the higher

value of , the controller has been demonstrated the desired
performance when it was test on the simplied nonlinear
model of the quadrotor. The hinfgs routine has given
the set of LTI controllers K
r
for each vertex S
r
of the TP
type convex polytopic form of the LPV quadrotor model.
Hence, the global LPV controller K(p(t)) during the self
gain scheduling process is estimated by:
K(p(t)) =
5

i=1
5

j=1
2

k=1
2

l=1
w
1,i
.w
2,j
.w
3,k
.w
4,l
K
r
, (21)
where K
r
=
_
A
K
i,j,k,l
B
K
i,j,k,l
C
K
i,j,k,l
D
K
i,j,k,l
_
.
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
A simplied nonlinear quadrotor model based on (1) was
implemented in Simulink. This has been used to assess the
capabilities of the LPV controller and also to compare with
a separate H

controller. The controllers have been tested

2011 6th International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems, ICIIS 2011, Aug. 16-19, 2011, Sri Lanka
487
-5 0 5 10 15 20 25
-5
0
5
10
15
20
25
x position (m)
y

p
o
s
i
t
i
o
n

(
m
)


Demand
Response
Student Version of MATLAB
Fig. 4. Square ight position response: LPV controller
-5 0 5 10 15 20 25
-5
0
5
10
15
20
25
x position (m)
y

p
o
s
i
t
i
o
n

(
m
)


Demand
Response
Student Version of MATLAB
Fig. 5. Square ight position response: H

controller
for a ramp test, a circular ight path and a square ight
path by analysing the quadrotor position response attitude
response, controller signals and the demands on actuators of
the quadrotor. For each ight test the full state vector value
has been given as the reference signal.
The controllers position responses of the square ight path
are presented in Fig. 4 and Fig. 5. During this manoeuvre the
quadrotor model augmented with the controller (either LPV
or H

) was initialised in hover, then a square ight path

having a total length of 80 m was demanded. The specied
ight speed was 2 ms
1
. In studying the responses, the LPV
controller has shown close tracking abilities for the position,
than that of the H

controller. When the ight directions

are changed at the corners, the LPV controller has given less
perturbation than the H

one. Moreover, the LPV controller

has taken less time to bring the quadrotor into the correct
path. However as shown in Fig. 6 the LPV controller imparts
much aggressive control signals on the quadrotor. This may
lead to actuator saturation of the real vehicle.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
Time (sec)
R
o
t
a
t
i
o
n
a
l

s
p
e
e
d

(
r
a
d
s
-
1
)


Front rotor
Rear rotor
Student Version of MATLAB
Fig. 6. Square ight actuator demands: LPV controller
V. CONCLUSION
In this work a self schedule LPV controller was designed
for the quadrotor vehicle. The controller synthesis requires an
afne LPV system model and the nonafne quadrotor model
has been transformed into the convex form using recently
proposed TP method. The derived LPV controller was tested
with a simplied nonlinear quadrotor model in Simulink and
the performance of the LPV controller was compared with an
H

controller.The simulation results exhibits very promising

close tracking capabilities of the LPV controller against the
H

controller.
The higher actuator demands of the LPV controller can
be minimised further ne tuning the performance weighting
functions (i.e. W
1
and W
2
) in the controller design. This is
needed to be investigated in a future work.
REFERENCES
[1] R. Xu and

Umit

Ozguner, Sliding mode control of a quadrotor
helicopter, In proceedings of the 45th IEEE conference on decision
& control San Diego, CA, USA, pp. 49574962, December 2006.
[2] T. Madani and A. Benallegue, Control of a quadrotor mini-helicopter
via full state backstepping technique, In proceedings of the 45th IEEE
Conference on Decision & Control San Diego, CA, USA, pp. 1515
1520, December 2006.
[3] M. Labadille, Nonlinear control of a quadrotor. M.Sc. thesis,
Craneld University, 2007.
[4] C. Balas, Linear controllers for a quadrotor helicopter. M.Sc. thesis,
Craneld University, 2007.
[5] S. Chumalee and J. F. Whidbrone, Gainscheduled H

autopilot
design via parameter dependent lyapunov functions, In AIAA Guidance,
Navigation and Control Conference,Chicago,Illinois, Agust 2009.
[6] P. Apkarian, P. Gahinet, and G. Becker, Self-scheduled H

control
of linear parameter-varying systems: A design example, Automatica,
vol. 31, pp. 12511261, December 1995.
[7] Z. Petres, Polytopic decomposition of linear parameter-varying models
by tensor-product model transformation. Ph.D. Thesis, Budapest
University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary, 2006.
[8] V. Martnez, Modelling of the ight dynamics of a quadrotor helicopter.
M.Sc. by Research Thesis, Craneld University, 2007.
[9] P. Baranyi, Z. Petres, and S. Nagy, A MATLAB toolbox for TP model
transformation. Budapest University of Technology, Hungary, 2009.
[Online]. Available: http://tptool.sztaki.hu/
[10] S. Skogestad and I. Postlethwaite, Multivariable feedback control (2
nd
ed). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, England, 2008.
2011 6th International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems, ICIIS 2011, Aug. 16-19, 2011, Sri Lanka
488