H∞ hovering and guidance control for autonomous small-scale unmanned helicopter

Abstract

This paper describes hovering and horizontal guidance control with H ∞ controller and performance verification through flight experiments for the hobby-class small-scale unmanned helicopter. Simple system identification method was applied to acquire single-input/single-output models. Cross-validation results have shown that those models were reflected in the actual dynamics very well. Attitude control has been constructed by proportional-integral feedback loop with derivative feed-forward compensator for improvement of reference following performance. H∞ control theory was applied for horizontal velocity control. Four closed-loop transfer functions were shaped according to the design specifications given in the frequency domain. Also, horizontal position control has been designed as proportional-derivative feedback. In the flight experiment, good performance of hovering and reference following has been shown through 15 m square point-to-point traveling guidance control, and this also showed high accuracy of the models.