Identification and control of an experimental Adaptive Optics setup

Adaptive optics have become the standard technique to compensate disturbances for ground based astronomy. Due to the demanding features of next generation telescopes, improved identification and control methods are required. In this paper we present the identification and control of an experimental adaptive optics system. The identification of the system’s Tip and Tilt dynamics is performed using the Prediction Error Method. A spectral factorisation approach is used to identify the continuous time disturbance model for mechanical vibrations. Using the identified models, a pole placement method is used to design a controller that compensates for the disturbances. The performance of the designed controller was evaluated and compared with a traditional PI controller, showing an almost tenfold improvement on output variance with the proposed design.