Modeling of an unmanned small coaxial helicopter

Applications of unmanned small scaled helicopters are increasing recently because of their compactness in size and their ability to maneuver in hazardous environments. PUC-FLY is a small scale unmanned coaxial helicopter engineered at Purdue University Calumet. In this research, the flight dynamics of the helicopter is derived based on mathematical modeling for analyzing it behavior and for control design. This model is validated with a second model developed based on SimMechanics, which is a MATLAB toolbox. Furthermore, a significant part of the PUC-FLY is the sensor onboard, which provides the vehicles six Degree of Freedom (DOF) self-motion data. It consist a tri-axis gyroscope and accelerometer which provide the position and attitude of helicopter. Data from the sensor is essential as the attitude controller is based on these readings. As a step towards the implementation, the data from the sensor is processed, and integrated to be functional with the attitude controller