Simulator Development for Autonomous Small Scaled Unmanned Helicopter

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a method to design a nonlinear simulator for a small scaled unmanned helicopter. The main bottleneck in enhancing the control accuracy of the autonomous flight is not having a accurate dynamic model for the helicopter. Change of moment of inertia of the helicopter due to the rotation of the rotor. interrelationship between each axis due to the gyroscopic effect, nonlinearity of the control inputs to the helicopter are some effects wich has to be considered to obtain a better dynamic model. In our approach we do the initial modelling using 3D cad software (Pro ENGINEER), then do the simulator design using a dynamic analysis software (DADS). Using this nonlinear model we do the flight simulation using previously designed attitude controller in MATLABs SIMULINK.