Robust H-infinity control under stochastic requirements: minimizing conditional value-at-risk instead of worst-case performance

Abstract: Conventional robust $\mathcal H_2/\mathcal H_\infty$ control minimizes the worst-case performance, often leading to a conservative design driven by very rare and somewhat arbitrary parametric configurations. To reduce this conservatism while taking advantage of the stochastic properties of Monte-Carlo sampling and its compatibility with parallel computing, we introduce an alternative paradigm that optimizes the controller with respect to a stochastic criterion, namely the conditional value at risk. We illustrate the potential of this approach on a realistic satellite benchmark, showing that it can significantly improve overall performance by tolerating some degradation in very rare worst-case scenarios.