A composed hybrid structure for the autonomous flight control of Unmanned helicopters

Abstract

The control system of an autonomous helicopter has a hybrid switching nature so that a reliable controller is required to be designed to capture the interplay between the continuous part and the discrete logic of the system. This paper develops a hierarchical hybrid framework that can be used in autonomous systems. The proposed framework has been adopted to Unmanned helicopters. Implementation of this control structure on the NUS UAV helicopter presents the UAV's capability of performing autonomous flight, and the demonstrated flight test results verify the effectiveness of the method. © 2011 IFAC.