Monday, August 16, 2010

Quanser's 3 DOF Helicopter Helps Researchers at Japan's Kumamoto University

The latest issue of the Control Engineering Practice Journal, published by Elsevier Ltd. brings a paper from research team at the Kumamoto University in Japan featuring Quanser's 3 DOF Helicopter.

In the paper titled "Nonlinear adaptive model following control for a 3-DOF tandem-rotor model helicopter", Mitsuaki Ishitobi, Masatoshi Nishi and Kazuhide Nakasaki explore feedback controller design for helicopters. Considering a two-input two-output nonlinear model following non-linear control of a 3-DOF tandem rotor helicopter, they studied control performance by real time implementation of the control algorithms in an actual helicopter testbed - Quanser's 3 DOF Helicopter. Since the decoupling matrix of the model helicopter is singular, the system is not decouplable by static state feedback, and it is challenging to design a feedback control system. To design the controller, the research team used a nonlinear structure algorithm, applying dynamic state feedback. The goal of the paper is to show feasibility of the nonlinear structure algorithm for a model helicopter which is not decoupable by the static state feedback.

The full paper is available for download at the ScienceDirect website.


Quanser's 3 DOF Helicopter allows to perform advanced research with applications in areas such as unmanned aerial vehicles.


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