Design of 6-DOF attitude controller of hovering model helicopter

For a maneuvering unmanned autonomous helicopter, it is necessary to design a proper controller of each flight mode. In this paper, overall helicopter dynamics is derived and hovering model is linearized and transformed into a state equation form. However, since it is difficult to obtain parameters of stability derivatives in the state equation directly, a linear control model is derived by time-domain parametric system identification method with real flight data of the model helicopter. Then, two different controllers - a linear feedback controller with proportional gains and a robust controller - are designed and their performance is compared. Both proposed controllers show outstanding results by computer simulation. These validated controllers can be used to autonomous flight controller of a real unmanned model helicopter.