Robust Receding Horizon Control of A Tri-Turbofan Airship

This paper examines the use of receding horizon control technique to stabilize a 6 degree-of-freedom model of a tri-turbofan remote controlled indoor airship. The lateral-directional dynamics of the airship are simulated using a linear parameter varying force model that has been verified against actual flight test data. Due to the varying dynamics of the airship as it transitions between different flight modes, the problem of developing robust controllers due to model uncertainty becomes challenging. A receding horizon control implementation formulated as a linear matrix inequality optimization problem is implemented in order to introduce robustness to the changing dynamics of the airship model.