A Location Tracking Control for Unmanned Small Scale Helicopter Using Sliding Mode Controller

Location tracking control system is developed for an unmanned small scale helicopter using sliding mode controller and cascade controller. The developed control system consists of an inner loop and outer loop. The inner loop control system determines the attitude of the helicopter based on the equation of motion with sliding mode controller. The outer loop control system based on the linear model of the helicopter generates the attitude reference according to the given position, heading references, altitude of the helicopter etc. The linear model for the outer loop control system is obtained by a linearization of the nonlinear helicopter dynamics during hover flight. A numerical simulation is performed on the nonlinear helicopter model to validate the effectiveness of the controller.