Design and Implementation of a Fully Autonomous Flight Control System for a UAV Helicopter

Abstract

An autonomous flight control law applicable to full-envelope was designed in this manuscript for a small-scale unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) helicopter to fly autonomously. The UAV helicopter was constructed based on a radio-controlled hobby helicopter by assembling an avionic system. The autonomous flight control law applicable to full-envelope was designed using a decentralized design methodology incorporating a newly developed nonlinear control techniques as well as dynamic inversion. The designed autonomous flight control law was implemented and verified in flight tests with the UAV helicopter. The flight test results demonstrate that the designed autonomous flight control law successfully drives the small-scale UAV helicopter to fly autonomously. The scheme of the autonomous flight control is applicable to flight control design of other UAVs.