Optimal Tracking Controller Design for a Small Scale Helicopter

TL;DR

This paper develops an optimal control-based tracking controller for small scale helicopters, addressing control constraints and analyzing performance trade-offs to improve autonomous flight accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a practical optimal control approach tailored for small helicopters, considering control constraints and performance trade-offs, which is novel in this context.

Findings

Effective trajectory tracking demonstrated in simulations

Control input and state trajectories show improved accuracy

Analysis of control power versus tracking performance

Abstract

A model helicopter is more difficult to control than its full scale counterparts. This is due to its greater sensitivity to control inputs and disturbances as well as higher bandwidth of dynamics. This works is focused on designing practical tracking controller for a small scale helicopter following predefined trajectories. A tracking controller based on optimal control theory is synthesized as part of the development of an autonomous helicopter. Some issues in regards to control constraints are addressed. The weighting between state tracking performance and control power expenditure is analyzed. Overall performance of the control design is evaluated based on its time domain histories of trajectories as well as control inputs.