The complexity of helicopter flight dynamics makes modeling and helicopter system identification a very difficult task. Most of the traditional techniques require a model structure to be defined a priori and in case of helicopter dynamics, this is difficult due to its complexity and the interplay between various subsystems. To overcome this difficulty, non-parametric approaches are commonly ado...

My project will be to design a RC helicopter that can be controlled with gestures via a control glove. The helicopter, including all mechanical parts, battery, and IR receiver, will come as-is out of box so the only thing that needs to be designed is the controller. The controller will be a in the form of a control glove and will contain different sensors (for example, multi-axis gyroscope sens...

Experiments from biology suggest that the sensing of image motion or optic flow in insects provides a means of determining the range to obstacles and terrain. When combined with a measure of ground speed from another sensor such as GPS, optic flow can be used to provide a measure of an aircraft’s height above terrain. We apply this principle to the control of height in a helicopter, leading to ...

This article presents an extended case study in the application of neuroevolution to generalized simulated helicopter hovering, an important challenge problem for reinforcement learning. While neuroevolution is well suited to coping with the domain's complex transition dynamics and high-dimensional state and action spaces, the need to explore efficiently and learn on-line poses unusual challeng...

The establishment of global helicopter linear model is very precious and useful for the design of the linear control laws, since it is never afforded in the published literatures. In the first principle approach, the mathematical model was developed using basic helicopter theory accounting for particular characteristic of the miniature helicopter. No formal system identification procedures are ...

INTRODUCTION Centralization of the hospital system entails longer transport for some patients. A physician-staffed helicopter may provide effective triage, advanced management and fast transport to highly specialized treatment for time-critical patients. The aim of this study was to describe activity and possible beneficial effect of a physician-staffed helicopter in a one-year trial period in ...

The question “When should investment in pest control stop?” either explicitly or implicitly underpins decisions concerning pest control made at every level of enterprise or government, regardless of whether these decisions are tactical or strategic. Bioeconomic modeling provides a quantitative framework for considering the benefits and costs of alternative pest control strategies. In this case ...

OBJECTIVE Transportation, whether by air or ground, exposes the injured patient to mechanical shocks and vibrations. These forces and their hazardous potential remain largely unknown. The purpose of this study was to identify, characterize, and compare the forces generated during patient transport in helicopter and ground ambulances. METHODS Forces generated during transport were measured usi...

Ungulate mortality from capture-related injuries is a recurring concern for researchers and game managers throughout North America and elsewhere. We evaluated effects of 7 variables to determine whether ungulate mortality could be reduced by modifying capture and handling procedures during helicopter net-gunning. During winter 2001–2006, we captured 208 white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus...

The paper describes hardware development for a small helicopter and a hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) simulator for flight control system and obstacle avoidance testing and validation. The proposed obstacle avoidance system (OAS) is briefly outlined. The HITL simulator is developed to closely mimic the behavior of the actual flight hardware so as to easily develop, debug, and test the flight contro...