Design of a Stability Augmentation System for an Unmanned Helicopter Based on Adaptive Control Techniques

The task of control of unmanned helicopters is rather complicated in the presence of parametric uncertainties and measurement noises. This paper presents an adaptive model feedback control algorithm for an unmanned helicopter stability augmentation system. The proposed algorithm can achieve a guaranteed model reference tracking performance and speed up the convergence rates of adjustable parameters, even when the plant parameters vary rapidly. Moreover, the model feedback strategy in the algorithm further contributes to the improvement in the control quality of the stability augmentation system in the case of low signal to noise ratios, mainly because the model feedback path is noise free. The effectiveness and superiority of the proposed algorithm are demonstrated through a series of tests.