Survey of Unmanned Helicopter Model-Based Navigation and Control Techniques

Abstract

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) have seen unprecedented levels of growth during the last two decades. Although many challenges still exist, one of the main UAS focus research areas is in navigation and control. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of helicopter navigation and control, focusing specifically on small-scale traditional main/tail rotor configuration helicopters. Unique to this paper, is the emphasis placed on navigation/control methods, modeling techniques, loop architectures and structures, and implementations. A 'reference template' is presented and used to provide a basis for comparative studies and determine the capabilities and limitations of algorithms for unmanned/autonomous flight, as well as for navigation, and control. A detailed listing of related research is provided, which includes model structure, helicopter platform, control method and loop architecture, flight maneuvers and results for each. The results of this study was driven by and has led to the development of a 'one-fits-all' comprehensive and modular navigation controller and timing architecture applicable to any rotorcraft platform.

Survey on Coverage Path Planning with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

“…The UAVs can be classified into two main top-level configurations, fixed-wing and rotary-wing. Both types present specific advantages and challenges considering the control and guidance system [11].…”

Robust Control for Lateral and Longitudinal Channels of Small-Scale Unmanned Helicopters

“…The basic parameters in (9), (10), and (13) can be identified by using the transfer function modeling, while others in the state-space model identification can be identified by CIFER. The results are shown in Table 1.…”

“…Recently, research on control methods of unmanned helicopters under exogenous disturbances (e.g., wind gust) has received great attention [4][5][6][7]. Such kind of classical methods includes PID based control methods [8,9], model predictive control method [10,11], and nonlinear feedforward controller [12][13][14]. PID control is one of the most classical control approaches whose performance closely depended on the accuracy of the model.…”

Adaptive Fuzzy Sliding Mode Control for a Model-Scaled Unmanned Helicopter

“…The unmanned helicopter is a multi-input and multi-output (MIMO) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). This helicopter can be considered as an underactuated system with high nonlinearities, and its nonlinear structure consists of high coupling between its dynamics and uncertainties caused by unmodeled dynamics, parameter uncertainty http://www.ispacs.com/journals/jfsva/2016/jfsva-00356/ International Scientific Publications and Consulting Services and external disturbances [4]. Therefore, the controller design is a challenging concept in both the theory and experimental implementation.…”