Implementation of a launch vehicle autopilot system.

Launch vehicles are most unstable during it's take-off and landing phase and are more prone to failures. So an autopilot system that can respond very quickly and do the micro adjustments of the vehicles stability is crucial. This project demonstrates the design of a launch vehicle flight control system using MATLAB and SIMULINK. Additional visualization of the system is done by simulating in the environment in FlightGear, an open source flight simulation engine. The system uses a State-Space matrix to describe the states of the Plant (the launch vehicle) and uses the LQR approach to optimize the work done by the controller. It takes the gimbal angle or the Thrust Vector Angle (TVC) as it's input and outputs the pitch angle, pitch rate and the drift of the vehicle. The simulation demonstrates how the implication of such control system would actually look like in the real world.