Abstract
This paper describes H_∞ horizontal velocity/position control and flight experiments for the hobby-class small-scale unmanned helicopter. Simple system identification method was applied to acquire single-input/single-output blackbox mathematical 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 synthesis. 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 gain feedback. In the flight experiment, good reference following performance has been shown through 15 [m] square point-to-point traveling guidance control, and this also showed high accuracy of the models. It is considered that successful horizontal guidance flight using H_∞ control theory for small-scale unmanned helicopter is the first result in the world.
