Mathematical modeling, simulation and identification of micro coaxial helicopter

Micro Coaxial Helicopter with compact size and vertical takeoff ability offers a good Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) configuration to handle indoor mission such as search, rescue and surveillance. An autonomous MAV helicopter equipped with micro vision devices could provide more information of the scene, in which the human present is risky. Toward an autonomous flight, mathematical model of the helicopter should be obtained before controller design takes place. This paper will discuss the mathematical modelling, simulation and identification of a micro coaxial helicopter. The mathematical model of the micro coaxial helicopter will be presented, in which total forces and moment are expressed as a Taylor series expansion as function of the state and control variables. The mathematical model will be used to simulate the helicopter responses due to control input. The simulation was used to obtain better understanding of the characteristics of the helicopter before flight test program are performed. Flight test program dedicated to identify the parameter of the micro coaxial helicopter have been carried out. The micro coaxial helicopter was instrumented with sensory system to measure some input and output variables. The use of Kalman filter to estimate the state and total least squares to estimate the aerodynamic parameter of micro coaxial helicopter based on the flight test data will be presented. Some identification results and model validation will be given in this paper.