Abstract
An autonomous unmanned helicopter is useful to check of electric line, shooting from mid-air etc, and if we can operate multiple helicopters, we can get the information more efficiently. In this paper, we discribe a formation flight control of Autonomous Small-Scall Unmanned Helicopters. We design the control system as leader following configuration, and model predictive controller is used for translational position control for each helicopter. The state constraint is considered in control calculation by using penalty function. To guarantee the stabilty, we use a terminal state cost on model predictive control. The stability analysis show that model predictive control has asymptotic stability. Minimal order disturbance obsever is used to estimate the unobsevable state variables and disturbance. Simulation results show the feasibility of the control strategy. For preparation of the formation flight control test, we carry out the experiment with single helicopter. The experimental results show that accurate control performance, constraint capability, and robustness against wind is achieved.
