PI-shaped LQG control design for adaptive optics systems

Abstract Adaptive optics systems are extensively used in astronomy to obtain diffraction-limited images of celestial objects with ground-based telescopes. The crucial point is to control a deformable mirror to compensate for the distortions introduced by atmospheric turbulence in the incoming wavefront. In this paper, a modal PI-shaped LQG controller taking advantage of model knowledge is designed; it compares favorably to standard PI and Kalman-based controllers used in state-of-the-art control systems of telescopes. The proposed architecture is validated with simulations and experiments on a laboratory adaptive optics test-bench.