Unmanned helicopter sensor suite and control design

This thesis presents the design of an autopilot capable of flying small unmanned helicopter with two rotors. The autopilot is small and light weight allowing to be installed underneath the helicopter???s body. The mathematical model is driven based on first principle approach required by the physics law of aerodynamics. PID controller is proposed for position and heading angle navigation. The results from simulation shown that PID controller performance was excellent regarding velocity and position tracking. The results showed a minor error and instabilities regarding heading and orientation angles stability that could be fixed with additional stabilizers. A number of assumptions were made to make the modeling as simple as possible. The simulation results validate the accuracy of method and model algorithm developed in this thesis with 2% magnitude error, and can be served as a useful source when adopting a controller for unmanned helicopters