An Algebraic Approach for the MIMO Control of Small Scale Helicopter

TL;DR

This paper introduces an algebraic control design method for small-scale helicopters, overcoming limitations of classical MIMO control techniques, and demonstrates its effectiveness in handling uncertainties and disturbances during hovering.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel algebraic approach for MIMO helicopter control that avoids complex multidimensional root locus diagrams and nested loop architectures.

Findings

Effective hovering control under uncertainties

Robust performance against wind disturbances

Simplified control design process

Abstract

The control of small-scale helicopter is a MIMO problem. To use of classical control approach to formally solve a MIMO problem, one needs to come up with multidimensional Root Locus diagram to tune the control parameters. The problem with the required dimension of the RL diagram for MIMO design has forced the design procedure of classical approach to be conducted in cascaded multi-loop SISO system starting from the innermost loop outward. To implement this control approach for a helicopter, a pitch and roll attitude control system is often subordinated to a, respectively, longitudinal and lateral velocity control system in a nested architecture. The requirement for this technique to work is that the inner attitude control loop must have a higher bandwidth than the outer velocity control loop which is not the case for high performance mini helicopter. To address the above problems, an algebraic design approach is proposed in this work. The designed control using s-CDM approach is demonstrated for hovering control of small-scale helicopter simultaneously subjected to plant parameter uncertainties and wind disturbances.