Robust C* Control Law Design Augmented with LIDAR-Based Gust Information

Abstract This paper presents robust control design for commercial aircraft, in which the control law is augmented with prior gust information. The main contribution of this paper is to integrate a gust alleviation system using Light Detection And Ranging (LIDAR) with the widely used flight control architecture, the so-called C* control law. This integration gives a good compromise between good maneuver/gust alleviation performance and the existing control architecture. Simulation results show that the proposed system effectively attenuates the vertical acceleration - almost similar to the controller optimized only for gust alleviation - while tracking vertical acceleration commands to achieve desired maneuvers.