Intelligent Rotor Speed Controller for a Mini Autonomous Helicopter

Rotor is the most important component in mini autonomous helicopter. In order to simplify identification and control, it is desirable for mini autonomous helicopter to hold rotor speed constant, since varying rotor speed causes varying aerodynamics. An intelligent rotor speed controller has been developed, which adopts the control algorithms of feed forward and fuzzy tuned PI. The hardware design especially the tachometer design is described in this paper. To improve the performance of PI controller, a fuzzy logic supervisor has been proposed for tuning the gain parameters of PI controller online. The controller is then applied in a mini autonomous helicopter to verify its performance. The experimental results of real flights have shown that the intelligent rotor speed controller is superior in dynamic and steady state performance for its advantages of quick response and good robustness. Numerous flights have also proven its reliability