Flybarless helicopter autopilot rapid prototyping using hardware in the loop simulation

Small scale autonomous helicopter flight involves a challenging control problem. A new small scale flybarless helicopter model is utilized in this research in order to evaluate the control designs and the experimental platform. The mazari developed autopilot for a fixed wing aircraft was re-designed in this research to fit highly agile flybarless Maxi Joker 3 helicopter. This paper presents a flybarless helicopter model, the PID control design, and the experimental validation for the model, including the hardware in loop simulation and actual flight tests.