Discrete-Time Predictive Controller with Time Delay for Unmanned Helicopter

Abstract

This paper presents a discrete predictive controller for a class of discrete time-delayed systems. The most time-delayed system, especially a highly unstable unmanned helicopter, has severe difficulties in stability and performance. Furthermore, the presence of disturbance more critically affects the stability of time-delayed systems since the delayed control input may lose the ability to stabilize the state. The proposed controller employs precise prediction of the future state, incorporating exponential stability for predicting future disturbance. In particular, the proposed state prediction can effectively compensate for disturbance effects without any robust control terms. The performance of the proposed controller is validated by numerical simulations. The results can verify the feasibility and performance of the proposed controller in the presence of significant time delay for the unmanned helicopter.