Project overview
While anti-windup compensation (AWC) is well established for linear plants, rigorous development
for nonlinear plants is limited. The proposed research will extend the theory to a certain class
of nonlinear plants: systems governed by rigid body dynamics. Tasks include: I) enhancement of
linear-based AWC techniques using analysis and design methods for a novel static term; and II) ex-
ploitation of nonlinear rigid-body dynamics in direct nonlinear AWC design. The research will also
address the associated problems of III) actuator control allocation and IV) actuator quantization,
which naturally arise in constrained rigid body problems. The main technical challenges will be
to effectively deal with the nonlinear plant dynamics while retaining the architectural and design
simplicity of classical AWC schemes. Outcomes include: a) new theory and tractable numerical
procedures for the synthesis of AWC that account for nonlinear aircraft/spacecraft dynamics, b)
demonstration of the effectiveness of these designs on representative systems and c) recommenda-
tions regarding the merits and drawbacks of the different design methods proposed.