Development of a small rotary wing autonomous vehicle

This paper discusses ongoing work being performed to develop a rotary wing autonomous vehicle. A small avionics package has been developed, installed, and verified on a Bergen Industrial Twin Helicopter. The avionics development included the design of an ultrasonic altimeter and mounting of a three-axis accelerometer. A small data logger based on a Motorola MC68332 processor was used to collect sensor data. A control program for the data logger was developed using the C programming language. The operation of the avionics package was validated through ground and flight testing. Concurrently with the development of the avionics package, a dynamic model of the helicopter was developed using aerodynamic parameterization and linear state-space modeling techniques. The Joint Army/Navy Rotorcraft Analysis and Design (JANRAD) computer program was utilized to obtain the stability and control derivatives. The fidelity of the simulation model was verified by comparing the simulation responses with data collected from the avionics sensors during flight tests.