Development of small-scale unmanned-aerial-vehicle helicopter systems

Abstract

Small-scale unmanned-aerial-vehicle (UAV) helicopters have aroused great interest worldwide. Due to their unique features, small-scale UAV helicopters are ideal platforms for both military and civil applications. The objective of this dissertation is to develop reliable small-scale UAV helicopter systems. The work reported consists of the following key parts: (1) platform design and construction, in which several UAV helicopter platforms have been built; (2) software system design, in which a sophisticated software system has been developed; (3) dynamic modeling, in which high-fidelity linear and nonlinear models have been obtained using diverse modeling approaches; (4) flight control law design, in which an advanced nonlinear control technique, i.e., composite nonlinear feedback (CNF) control, together with dynamic inversion and a flight scheduling generator, has been adopted to realize the automatic control in the full flight envelope; and finally (5) actual flight tests of the overall UAV system, which have demonstrated the efficiency and reliability.