A hybrid experimental validation of nonlinear energy-based control with noisy and biased measurements

Current validation of feedback control law typically relies on simulations that may not capture the actual noise and bias characteristics or on the experiments that is more expensive and less manageable. This paper proposes a hybrid experimental strategy to validate the effectiveness of nonlinear feedback control law for attitude control of Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles (UAVs). We use the typical measurement device, Micro-Electro-Mechanic Systems (MEMS) gyroscope, with a turntable to capture the exact measurement noise and bias. We implement the gyroscope with different up-pointing axes and rotation speeds to imitate different bias. Then, these measured angular velocities are combined into the numerical simulation of a rigid body dynamics with feedback control law to examine the performance of the nonlinear feedback control law. Results show that trajectories of the closed-loop Euler angle are close to the designed reference trajectory and the estimated bias accurately reflecting the measured bias. This hybrid experiments validate the effectiveness of energy based nonlinear feedback control law with noisy and biased experimental measurements using a much less cost.