A HIL Testbed for Initial Controller Gain Tuning of a Small Unmanned Helicopter

Authors:
Sepehr P. Khaligh;Alejandro Martínez;Farbod Fahimi;Charles Robert Koch
Affiliations:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada T6G 2G8;Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada T6G 2G8;Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, USA 35899;Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada T6G 2G8
Venue:
Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems
Year:
2014

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Abstract

A Hardware-In-The-Loop (HIL) testbed design for small unmanned helicopters which provides a safe and low-cost platform to implement control algorithms and tune the control gains in a controlled environment is described. Specifically, it allows for testing the robustness of the controller to external disturbances by emulating the hover condition. A 6-DOF nonlinear mathematical model of the helicopter has been validated in real flight tests. This model is implemented in real-time to estimate the states of the helicopter which are then used to determine the actual control signals on the testbed. Experiments of the longitudinal, lateral and heading control tests are performed. To minimize the structural stress on the fuselage in case of controller failure or a subsystem malfunction, a damping system with a negligible parasitic effect on the dynamics of the helicopter around hover is incorporated. The HIL testbed is capable of testing the helicopter in hover, as well as on any smooth trajectories such as cruise flight, figure-8, etc. Experimentally tuning the controller on the HIL testbed is described and results in a controller which is robust to the external disturbances, and achieves an accuracy of 卤2.5 cm in the position control on the longitudinal and lateral trajectory tracking, and 卤5 deg accuracy around the yaw axis on the heading trajectory tracking.