A control structure for autonomous model helicopter navigation

A hierarchical design for the guidance and control of a small autonomous helicopter system and some preliminary results are presented. At the top of the hierarchy is a navigation manager which specifies mission requirements via a flight path controller to the actual aerial vehicle. The entire design is based on a nonlinear model of the helicopter that accounts for the rotary wing dynamics, the force and moment generation mechanism and the rigid body dynamics. A time-varying optimal control scheme is applied to the nonlinear model to achieve attitude stabilization while a PI outer loop is used for height control. Simulation results demonstrate the performance of the system for some representative mission scenarios.