Intelligent Attitude Control of an Unmanned Helicopter

This paper presents a new attitude stabilization and control of an unmanned helicopter based on neural network compensation. A systematic derivation on the dynamics of an unmanned small-scale helicopter is performed. Combined rotor-fuselage-tail dynamics is derived in body-fixed reference frame with its origin at the C.G. of the helicopter. And the resulting nonlinear equation of motion consists of 6-DOF air vehicle dynamics as well as the rotor flapping and engine torque equations. A simulation model was modified using the existing simulator for an unmanned helicopter dynamic model, which reflects the unmanned test helicopter(CNUHELI). The dynamic response of the refined model was compared with the flight test data. It can be shown that a good coincidence was accomplished between the real unmanned helicopter system and the mathematical model. This dynamic model was linearized for classical controller design using small perturbation method. A Neuro-PD control system was designed for both longitudinal and lateral flight modes, and the results were compared with the PD-only control response. Simulation results show that the proposed Neuro-PD control system demonstrates better performance.