Cascaded position and heading control of a robotic helicopter

We present a cascaded control architecture for a Yamaha RMAX robotic helicopter. The controller is composed of an inner-loop that stabilizes the unstable poles of the helicopter´s linear dynamic model; and an outer-loop that decouples the dynamics of the lateral, longitudinal, vertical, and heading axes and enables trajectory tracking. Actual flight results are presented to demonstrate the validity of the method. A discussion on the method´s limitations and our plans on how to overcome them are also presented.