This paper presents the parameter optimisation of the flight control system of a singlerotor medium-scale rotorcraft. The six degrees-of-freedom (DOF) nonlinear mathematical model of the rotorcraft is developed. This model is then used to develop proportional–integral–derivative (PID)-based controllers. Since the majority of PID controllers installed in industry are poorly tuned, this paper presents a comparison of the optimised tuning of the flight controller parameters using particle swarm optimisation (PSO), genetic algorithm (GA), ant colony optimisation (ACO) and cuckoo search (CS) optimisation algorithms. The aim is to find the best PID parameters that minimise the specified objective function. Two trim conditions are investigated, i.e., hover and 10 m/s forward flight. The four algorithms performed better than manual tuning of the PID controllers. It was found, through numerical simulation, that the ACO algorithm converges the fastest and finds the best gains for the selected objective function in hover trim conditions. However, for 10 m/s forward flight trim, the GA algorithm was found to be the best. Both the tuned flight controllers managed to reject a gust wind of up to 5 m/s in the lateral axis in hover and in forward flight.

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