Predictive Guidance Control for Autonomous Kites with Input Delay

Abstract We consider the design of a model predictive guidance controller in a cascaded control scheme for an autonomous kite with significant input delay. The rate of change of the signal commanded by the guidance is bounded to ensure robust performance of the underlying tracking controller. We analyse the limitations of the tracking controller arising from model parameter uncertainty and input delay. The delay is accounted for in the control design by predicting the values of the feedback variables ahead of time based on the past inputs and the system models. To account for changing operating conditions the model parameters are updated online. The proposed method has been tested in a real-time hardware-in-the-loop simulation study.

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