mu synthesis for a large flexible space structure experimental testbed

An application is presented of mu synthesis to the robust control of a larg e flexible space structure experimental testbed called Daisy. A perturbed l eft-coprime factorization of Daisy's dynamics is used to capture the uncert ainty in the modes. Designs of the mu synthesis controller based on left-co prime factorizations of 46th-order collocated and noncollocated models of D aisy are presented together with simulation and experimental results. These results are compared to those obtained with H-infinity controllers, and it is shown that the mu controllers performed better. These controllers provi de robust performance with respect to given bounds on modal parameter uncer tainties without resorting to computationally complex techniques involving real structured perturbations.