Hybrid Formation Control of Unmanned Helicopters

Abstract

This thesis develops a hierarchical hybrid supervisory control framework for the formation of unmanned helicopters as a cooperative task. This control structure has been constructed in two main steps. First, to have an autonomous flying system, a hierarchical hybrid control structure is developed for a single unmanned helicopter to capture the interplay between the maneuver switching logic and the corresponding continuous dynamics under each control mode. Then, in the second step, a hybrid supervisory control framework is proposed for the formation of unmanned helicopters using a novel method of abstraction based on polar and spherical partitioning of the motion space. The developed hierarchical hybrid controller has been implemented on the NUS UAV helicopters and several flight tests are conducted to verify the algorithm.