Commande haute performance pour les systèmes d'optique adaptative – CHAPERSOA

Project CHAPERSOA is devoted to the design of high-performance control laws for Adaptive Optics (AO) systems intended to equip existing large telescopes, such as the VLT (Very Large Telescope), or extremely large telescopes on the drawing board. These AO systems of the next generation are strongly multivariable servo loops (with input/output vectors with hundreds or thousands of coordinates), combining continuous- or discrete-time dynamical subsystems operating at high frequencies (in the kHz range). They include pure delays and uncertain parameters, which are liable to vary during possibly several hours long operating cycles. This demanding applicative context, together with uneasy access to experimental devices and the lack of contact between opticians/astronomers and the ICS (Information and Control Sciences) community, have up to now colluded to delay the application of advanced control design tools in AO. Project CHAPERSOA brings together two ICS research laboratories (L2TI-Univ. Paris 13-EA 3043 et SATIE-École Normale Supérieure de Cachan-UMR 8029), a team of opticians (DOTA- ONERA member of the Groupement d'intérêt scientifique (GIS) Phase) and an astronomy laboratory (LAOG-Univ. Joseph Fourier [Grenoble]-UMR 5571) to address this challenge through a pluridisciplinary approach. With this partnership between experts in control engineering, signal and image processing, opticians and astronomers, we propose to explore the design of high performance AO control through theoretical studies, simulations and test-bench experiments. We focus on optimal control in new AO concepts for wide Field of View (FoV) performance optimization, which is a breakthrough approach in AO design. Experiments will be conducted on DOTA's test benches and on an AO platform set up by LAOG, which shall be opened to the ICS community.