A novel force tracking control approach to an autonomous unmanned helicopter system

In this paper, a force control technique is applied to an autonomous aerial helicopter system. Applying a force control technique to a helicopter system is quite new since the helicopter system is mostly used for carrying humans or objects and navigating. For those operations, speed control is used most. For a specific task, however, position control for attitude control application is required as well. Here, the speed of a helicopter is controlled by the LQR method, and position is controlled by closing the other outer loop. After the position control is done, the force control is also applied. The adaptive impedance force control algorithm is applied and tested to control the desired force under unknown location and stiffness of the environment. The simple adaptive law minimizes the force tracking error. Simulation studies show that the proposed control algorithm works well.