Predictive Control of Autonomous Kites in Tow Test Experiments

In this letter, we present a model-based control approach for autonomous flight of kites for wind power generation. Predictive models are considered to compensate for delay in the kite dynamics. We apply model predictive control (MPC), with the objective of guiding the kite to follow a figure-of-eight trajectory, in the outer loop of a two level control cascade. The tracking capabilities of the inner-loop controller depend on the operating conditions and are assessed via a frequency domain robustness analysis. We take the limitations of the inner tracking controller into account by encoding them as optimization constraints in the outer MPC. The method is validated on a kite system in tow test experiments.