Flight Control And Task Scheduling Of Small-scale Unmanned Helicopter

Extensive research on Small-scale unmanned helicopter (SUH) has been carried out around the world as a result of its unique flight performance and great value in both military and civil domain. SUH is a kind of motion object with highly non-linearity, strong couplings, time-varying and open-loop unstable, posting a great challenge to flight control.In this paper, the main research object is the control system of "Wings of Yuquan" SUH. The software architecture of flight control system is built; the methods of multi-mode task scheduling are proposed; the controllers for coordinated turn mode are designed; and Dynamic matrix control (DMC) strategy is introduced to meet the request of trajectory tracking for forward mode. The main contributions of this work are as follows:1. The research status of unmanned helicopter and its autonomous flight control method are reviewed. the major methods for flight control are commented, while the main problems are pointed out.2. The overall framework of the experiment system is introduced, including the hardware system, software architecture and simulation system design. The software architecture and its function module implementation under RTOS environment are accomplished, achieving both good reliability and scalability.3. The task scheduling methods are proposed based on the hierarchical system framework, which is suitable for complex cruise flight tasks. The multi-mode task scheduling and transition strategies are detailed designed. Both the experiment and simulation results prove that the methods are very efficient.4. The dynamic characteristic of the unmanned helicopter is analyzed and the control methods for coordinated turn mode are proposed. Based on the methods the PID controllers of SUH are designed. The hardware-in-the-loop simulation results prove that the controllers are very efficient, which lays the foundation for SUH to perform more complex tasks.5. Dynamic matrix control (DMC) strategy is introduced to meet the request of trajectory tracking for MUH. After stabilizing of the system, a DMC controller is designed. The hardware-in-the-loop simulation results prove that this method is very efficient.