This paper describes the development of a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with autonomous flight capability. It is the result of integrating a commercial off-the-shelf autopilot system with a low-cost gas-powered RC helicopter. Researchers face several challenges when developing UAVs using gas-powered RC helicopters. To avoid the corruption of the structural vibration to the avionics hardware system, an innovative vibration isolation technique is developed to mechanically isolate the vibrations from the gas engine and rotors. Furthermore, a dynamics model for the vehicle is created to support the autonomous flight control development work. Further, a loss-recover method using Kalman filter is employed for estimating the attitude and position statuses when GPS signal is lost. Several other key challenges related to electromagnetic interference shielding and safe flight testing are also effectively solved in the project. The integration work has been completed and the test flights done so far show that the developed autonomous UAV works well under the integration of the mechanical system, electronic system, and controller software.
CaiGChenBMLeeTH. An overview on development of miniature unmanned rotorcraft system. Front Electrical Electron Eng China2012; 5(1): 1–14.
2.
Thomas LA, Dennis FL, Jonny TM, et al. Autonomous inverted hover of a small scale helicopter. Project report: serve as documentation for the 8th semester, 2008.
3.
Claudia M, Luminita CT and Simon KK. Modeling and control of autonomous quad-rotor. Project report, 2010, pp.24–37.
4.
SamanoACastroRLozanoR. Modeling and stabilization of a multi-rotor helicopter. J Intell Robot Syst2013; 69: 161–169.
5.
WangCKGuoJ. The modeling and simulation of hexa-rotor aerial robot. Appl Mech Mater2013, pp. 300542–301546.
6.
David HS and Shankar S. A situation-aware flight control system design using real-time model predictive control for unmanned autonomous helicopters. In: AIAA Guidance, navigation, and control conference and exhibit, Keystone, Colorado, 21–24 August 2006. AIAA2006-6101.
7.
KimHJDavidHS. A flight control system for aerial robots: Algorithms and experiments. Control Eng Pract2003; 11: 1389–1400.
8.
Bergeman M, Amidi O, Miller JR, et al. Cascaded position and heading control of a robotic helicopter. In: IEEE/RSJ International conference on intelligent robots and system, San Diego, CA, USA, October 2007, pp.135–140.
9.
Dittrich JS. Design and integration of an unmanned aerial vehicle navigation system. Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, May 2002.
10.
Doherty P. Knowledge representation and unmanned aerial vehicle. In: IEEE/ACM International conference on intelligent agent technology, 2005, pp.9–16.
11.
CaiGFengLChenBM. Systematic design methodology and construction of UAV helicopter. IEEE Trans Mechatron2008; 8: 545–558.
12.
Wahab AA, Mamat R and Shamsudin SS. The development of autopilot system for an autonomous UAV helicopter model. In: 1st Regional conference on vehicle engineering & technology, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 3–5 July 2006.
13.
MichailKKimonV. A cost effective tracking system for small unmanned aerial systems. J Intell Robot Syst2010; 57: 171–191.
14.
Cory R and Tedrake R. Experiments in fixed-wing UAV perching. In: AIAA Guidance, navigation, and control conference, 2008, Honolulu, Hawaii.
15.
Cory R. Super maneuverable perching. PhD Thesis, MIT, USA, June 2010, Honolulu, Hawaii.
16.
DesbiensALCutkoskyMR. Landing and perching on vertical surface with microspines for small unmanned air vehicles. J Intell Robot Syst2010; 57: 313–327.
17.
DesbiensALAsbeckATCutkoskyMR. Landing, perching and taking off from vertical surface. Int J Robot Res2011; 30(3): 355–370.
18.
Pounds PEI and Dollar A. Hovering stability of helicopters with elastic constraints. In: ASME Dynamic systems and control conference, Cambridge, MA, USA, 12–15 September 2010, pp.781–788.
19.
Pounds PEI, Bersak DR and Dollar AM. Grasping from the air: Hovering capture and load stability. In: IEEE International conference on robotics and automation, Shanghai, China, 9–13 May 2011, pp.2491–2498.
20.
Mellinger D, Shomin M and Kumar V. Control of quadrotors for robust perching and landing. In: International powered lift conference, Philadelphia, PA, USA, 5–7 October 2010, pp.2668–2673.
21.
Mellinger D, Lindsey Q, Shomin M, et al. Design, modeling, estimation and control for aerial grasping and manipulation. In: International conference on intelligent robots and systems, San Francisco, CA, USA, 25–30 September 2011, pp.2668–2673.
22.
MellingerDShominMMichaelN. Cooperative grasping and transport using multiple quadrotors. In: Distributed autonomous robotic systemsBerlin Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 545–558.
23.
Doyle CE, Bird JJ, Isom TA, et al. Avian-inspired passive perching mechanism for robotic rotorcraft. In: IEEE/RSJ International conference on intelligent robots and systems, San Francisco, CA, 25–30 September 2011, pp. 4975–4980.
24.
Xie P and Ma O. Grasping analysis of a bio-inspired UAV/MAV grasping/perching mechanism. In: ASME 2013 International mechanical engineering congress & exposition (IMECE), San Diego, CA, USA, 15–21 November 2013.
25.
Xie P, Ma O and Zhang Z. A bio-inspired approach for UAS landing and perching. AIAA/GNC. Boston, USA, 2013.
26.
ZhangZZhangSXieP. Bioinspired 4D trajectory generation for a UAS rapid point-to-point movement. J Bionic Eng2014; 11(1): 72–81.
Xie P, Flores-Abad A, Martinez G, et al. Development of a Small UAV with autopilot capability. In: AIAA Atmospheric flight mechanics conference, Portland, OR, USA, 8–11 August, 2011.
29.
Xie P, Gardner B and Ma O. Integration of an autopilot system with a hobby RC helicopter. In: ASME International design engineering technical conferences, Washington, DC, USA, 29–31 August 201.
30.
Plasencia GNM, Rodrísguez MT, Rivera SC, et al. Model and analysis of vibration in a UAV helicopter with a vision system. Int J Adv Robot Syst 2012; 9: 220–2012.
31.
Gavrilets V, Shterenberg A, Dahleh MA, et al. Avionics system for a small unmanned helicopter performing aggressive maneuvers. In: Digital avionics systems conference, 2000.
32.
NikosIVNikosCT. An experimental test bed for small unmanned helicopters. J Intell Robot Syst2009; 54: 769–794.
33.
Ortega C, Ma O and Ruble K. Gravity-balanced test stand for testing micro air vehicles. In: AIAA Atmospheric flight mechanics conference, Chicago, IL, USA, 2009.
34.
Prior SD, Karamanoglu M, Odedra S, et al. Development of a co-axial tri-rotor UAV. In: UAVs 24th International conference, Bristol, UK, 30 March to 1 April 2009.
35.
Chen W, Liu M and Ge Y. The design of small UAV autopilot hardware system based on DSP. In: 2010 International conference on intelligent computation technology and automation, Changsha, China, 2010, pp.780–783.
36.
Maroney DR, Boiling RH, Heffron ME, et al. Experiemntal platforms for evaluating sensor technology for UAS collision avoidance. In: 26th IEEE/AIAA Conference on digital avionics system, Dallas, TX, USA, 2007.
Raptis IA and Valavanis KP. Linear and nonlinear control of small-scale unmanned helicopters. Intelligent systems, control and automation: science and engineering. 2011.
40.
GadewadikarJChenBMSubbaraoK. Structured H∞ command and control-loop design for unmanned helicopters. J Guid Control Dyn2008; 31(4): 1093–1102.
41.
Cai G, Chen BM, Peng K, et al. Modeling and control system design for a UAV helicopter. In: 14th Mediterranean conference on control and automation, Ancona, 28–30 June 2006, pp.1–6.
42.
KimBChangYLeeMH. System identification and 6-DOF hovering controller design of unmanned model helicopter. JSME Int J Ser C2007; 49(4): 1048–1057.
43.
MP2128HELI user manual: MP2128heli_User_Guide.pdf.
