Summary
In case of engine failure, skilled pilots can save a helicopter from crashing by executing an emergency procedure known as autorotation. In autorotation, rather than relying on the engine to drive the main rotor, the pilot has to control the helicopter such that potential energy from altitude is transferred to rotor speed. In fact, maintaining a sufficiently high rotor speed is critical to retain sufficient control of the helicopter to land safely. In this paper, we present the first autonomous controller to successfully pilot a remotely controlled (RC) helicopter during an autorotation descent and landing.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Abbeel, P., Coates, A., Quigley, M., Ng, A.Y.: An application of reinforcement learning to aerobatic helicopter flight. In: NIPS 19 (2007)
Abbeel, P., Ganapathi, V., Ng, A.Y.: Learning vehicular dynamics with application to modeling helicopters. In: NIPS 18 (2006)
Anderson, B., Moore, J.: Optimal Control: Linear Quadratic Methods. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1989)
Bagnell, J., Schneider, J.: Autonomous helicopter control using reinforcement learning policy search methods. In: Int’l Conf. on Robotics and Automation (2001)
Coates, A., Abbeel, P., Ng, A.Y.: Learning for control from multiple demonstrations. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning (2008)
Gavrilets, V., Martinos, I., Mettler, B., Feron, E.: Control logic for automated aerobatic flight of miniature helicopter. In: AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conf. (2002)
Gavrilets, V., Martinos, I., Mettler, B., Feron, E.: Flight test and simulation results for an autonomous aerobatic helicopter. In: AIAA/IEEE Digital Avionics Systems Conf. (2002)
Jacobson, D.H., Mayne, D.Q.: Differential Dynamic Programming. Elsevier, Amsterdam (1970)
Johnson, W.: Helicopter Optimal Descent and Landing After Power Loss. NASA TM-73244 (1977)
La Civita, M., Papageorgiou, G., Messner, W.C., Kanade, T.: Design and flight testing of a high-bandwidth \(\cal{H}_{\infty}\,\) loop shaping controller for a robotic helicopter. Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics 29(2), 485–494 (2006)
Lee, A.: Optimal Landing of a Helicopter in Autorotation. PhD thesis, Stanford University (July 1985)
Leishman, J.: Principles of Helicopter Aerodynamics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2000)
Mettler, B., Tischler, M., Kanade, T.: System identification of small-size unmanned helicopter dynamics. In: American Helicopter Society, 55th Forum (1999)
Ng, A.Y., Coates, A., Diel, M., Ganapathi, V., Schulte, J., Tse, B., Berger, E., Liang, E.: Autonomous inverted helicopter flight via reinforcement learning. In: ISER (2004)
Ng, A.Y., Jin Kim, H., Jordan, M., Sastry, S.: Autnonomous helicopter flight via reinforcement learning. In: NIPS 16 (2004)
Roberts, J.M., Corke, P.I., Buskey, G.: Low-cost flight control system for a small autonomous helicopter. In: Int’l Conf. on Robotics and Automation (2003)
Saripalli, S., Montgomery, J., Sukhatme, G.: Visually-guided landing of an unmanned aerial vehicle (2003)
Seddon, J.: Basic Helicopter Aerodynamics. AIAA Education Series. America Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (1990)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Abbeel, P., Coates, A., Hunter, T., Ng, A.Y. (2009). Autonomous Autorotation of an RC Helicopter. In: Khatib, O., Kumar, V., Pappas, G.J. (eds) Experimental Robotics. Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 54. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00196-3_45
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00196-3_45
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-00195-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-00196-3
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)