The purpose of this paper is to conduct the design, development and testing of a controller for an autonomous small-scale helicopter.

    Design/methodology/approach

    The hardware in the loop simulation (HILS) platform is developed based on the nonlinear model of JR Voyager G-260 small-scale helicopter. Autonomous controllers are verified using the HILS environment prior to flight experiments.

    Findings

    The gains of the multi-loop cascaded control architecture can be effectively optimized within the HILS environment. Various autonomous flight operations are achieved and it is demonstrated that the prediction from the simulations is in a good agreement with the result from the flight test.

    Research limitations/implications

    The synthesized controller is effective for the particular test-bed. For other small-scale helicopters (with different size and engine specifications), the controller gains must be tuned again.

    Practical implications

    This work represents a practical control design and testing procedures for an autonomous small-scale helicopter flight control. The autonomous helicopter can be used for various missions ranging from film making, agriculture and volcanic surveillance to power line inspection.

    Originality/value

    The research addresses the need for systematic design, development and testing of controller for a small-scale autonomous helicopter by utilizing HILS environment.


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    Title :

    Control system design and testing for a small-scale autonomous helicopter


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2010-10-19


    Size :

    7 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English