Parameter Estimation Techniques for Helicopter Dynamic Modelling

This paper investigates the problem of estimating parameters in a state-space helicopter dynamical model for helicopter controller design and evaluation. Two methods, PEM (the prediction error method) and RBPF (the Rao- Blackwellized particle filter-based method), are presented in the paper. Computer simulations are carried out to assess and compare the performance of the two methods with different assumptions on the initial conditions of the parameters to be estimated. Based on this assessment, an estimation scheme that combines the two methods is proposed. The proposed scheme is then applied to real data from EH101 helicopter flight tests and a vertical model including rotor coning dynamics is identified.