This paper presents an LMI-based method for the design and tuning of robust H₂ output feedback controllers, illustrated with two case studies. The conservatism of design is considerably reduced by a proposed scaling procedure, referred to as K-S iteration. The method is applied to the ACC benchmark problem and shown to outperform previously published solutions. The choice of tuning parameters and tuning strategies are discussed in detail. Real-time experiments on an experimental version of the benchmark problem demonstrate the practicality of the proposed approach.