Autonomous helicopters, as opposed to their manned counterparts, have a number of applications, usually situations in which a human pilot would be put into jeopardy, such as, to cite the example provided by the CSIRO autonomous helicopter team, the surveying of overhead high tension power lines. They doubtless also have military application, possibly in surveillance situations where a traditional unmanned spy plane or satellite would be inapplicable. The actual control of such unmanned rotorcraft is extremely complex and requires several “levels” of control system to finally enable point to point navigation and hence true autonomous flight. As a fundamental, it is imperative that an attitude stabilizing controller be able to maintain a stable hover in the presence of various (and sometimes, rather extreme) disturbances, and this is usually the first step undertaken in such a project. While the construction of such a controller is an extremely difficult task and one to be undertaken over many years, it is the goal of this group to out-fit EEE’s existing autonomous helicopter system with the sensors that are required to model the system accurately and finally develop such a controller. To this end, the group will install on- and off-board sensor systems to pave the way for future projects.

Chiong-Vui Wong, Han-Qing Tan, James Sharp, David Jahshan