The Design And Development Of An Embedded Autopilot's Main Controller For An Unmanned Helicopter

The development of unmanned helicopter technology and the autopilot begines earlier abroad than at home, and several mature autopilot products have appearanced already. Domestic studies are later and blockaded by foreign technology.Although many research institutes are trying to explore, but at present domestic unmanned helicopters' autopilots still have very big disparity with foreign levels, in areas of posture stabilization, intelligent navigation and management, etc.The main controller is the operation platform for autopilot's core algorithm, including a series of control algorithm, such as posture, navigation guidance, flight management, flight control and so on. At the same time it is also on charge of the data communication with navigation equipment, wireless transmission equipment and association controller.From the Angle of the embedded technology, this paper studies the overall design, the functional design, the software and hardware design for the main controller of some unmanned helicopter's autopilot, hoping to realize high performance and miniaturization.This paper introduces the development background and research situation of UAVs firstly. And then it expounds the autopilot's scheme design. It analyzes the function design of the main controller and also the hardware and software design, including the selection and application of an Intel XScale PXA270 microprocessor. Research of the embedded Linux operating system software and related technology is introduced in the following section. Then the bottom driver design and operation commissioning results are described. Finally user application programs are listed as functional description with flowcharts.This paper shows the prophase research achievements. And it will provide guidance for not only further scientific research and development work, but also excellent actual test platform for the research work of advanced algorithm. Comparing to other autopilot schemes, our structure design is more reasonable, functional design is more completed, and the research work is rich of innovation and groundbreaking.