We present an Unmanned Aviation Vehicle-based Photogrammetric mapping system in this paper. This work is part of a project monitoring of unpaved road condition using remote sensing and other technology, sponsored by the US Department of Transportation. The system is based on a low cost model helicopter equipped with a GPS/IMU and a geomagnetic sensor to detect the position, attitude and velocit...

Robust attitude tracking control of a small-scale aerobatic helicopter using geometric and backstepping techniques is presented in this article. A nonlinear coupled rotor-fuselage dynamics model of the helicopter is considered, wherein the rotor flap dynamics is modeled as a first order system, while the fuselage is as a rigid body dynamically coupled to the rotor system. The robustness of the ...

Control of a helicopter is complex, and includes cross coupling of forces and balancing of forces. While sophisticated and advanced controllers can achieve stable control, good mechanical design can reduce the problems and hence make tuning the control loops easier. In this paper, we argue that a coaxial-rotor design solves a number of problems that make control of a four-rotor helicopter diffi...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether availability of the Cornwall Helicopter Ambulance enabled the ambulance service to arrive more rapidly at the scene of emergencies. DESIGN Retrospectively collected ambulance service data analyzed longitudinally. SETTING The ambulance service in Cornwall. SUBJECTS Patients carried as emergencies by the ambulance service. VARIABLE STUDIED: Augmentation of a c...

A model helicopter is more difficult to control than its full scale counterpart. This is due to its greater sensitivity to control inputs and disturbances as well as higher bandwidth of dynamics. This work is focused on designing practical tracking controller for a small scale helicopter following predefined trajectories. A tracking controller based on optimal control theory is synthesized as a...

Techniques for Improved Blade Vortex Interaction Modeling,”Proceedings of the 51st Annual Forum of the American Helicopter Society (Fort Worth, TX), 1995. 31Johnson, W., Helicopter Theory, Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ, 1980, Chap. 1. 32Miller, W., “Analytical/Numerical Matching and Periodic Inversion: Two Advances in Free Wake Analysis,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Dept. of Mechanical Engineeri...

In this paper, we present the design and implementation of an autonomous flight control law for a smallscale unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) helicopter. The approach is decentralized in nature by incorporating a newly developed nonlinear control technique, namely the composite nonlinear feedback control, together with dynamic inversion. The overall control law consists of three hierarchical layer...

This paper considers two-input, two-output nonlinear adaptive model following control of a 3-DOF (degree-of-freedom) tandem rotor model helicopter. The control performance is studied by real time implementation of the control algorithms in an actual helicopter testbed. Since the decoupling matrix of the model helicopter is singular, the system is not decouplable by static state feedback, and it...

By hybrid aircraft, we mean a UAV that can vertically take-off, land and hover like a helicopter, and meanwhile can be converted to a fixed wing airplane to achieve high forward speed and long endurance than normal helicopters. This paper presents our recent work on control of a novel small scale hybrid aircraft. The proposed aircraft should follow a specific trend of trajectory to be able to c...

Helicopter landing sites in proximity to the forest fire-risk zones are necessary for the delivery of supplies and fire emergency response teams. In this paper, we initially prepared forest fire risk map using Random Forest algorithm by overlaying the effective factors on fire occurring including vegetation types, physiographic, climatic and human factors. Then, three variants of natural candid...