Application of predictive control to a toy helicopter

A toy helicopter makes for an impressive classroom control demonstration. However the challenge to obtain a robust, stable, multivariable controller is nontrivial given the nonlinear nature of the helicopter, the stochastic nature of the disturbances, and the performance limitations of PCs. This paper applies a model predictive controller using the Mathworks xPC target to obtain significantly improved results over that achievable using classical control algorithms.