Control testbed design for a miniature autonomous helicopter

This paper is a specific description of a miniature autonomous helicopter testbed, namely the SRD-Heli. Airframe and avionics system of the helicopter testbed, including the inertial measurement unit, the digital signal processing and the signal switching and transition, are presented in detail. Some control schemes (including PID control and trajectory linearizaiton control) are introduced briefly to test the SRD-Heli. Experimental results concerning the hovering and forward flight are displayed to verify the performances of the testbed.