Autonomous Hovering of an Experimental Unmanned Helicopter System with Proportional-Integral Sliding Mode Control

Abstract

This paper presents a method of approaching the attitude control of an autonomously hovering unmanned helicopter system. The proportional-integral sliding mode controller (PISMC) features a combination of the conventional sliding mode control (SMC) and the integral sliding mode control (ISMC). By applying the PISMC algorithm, the controller is capable of providing stable roll and pitch control of the main rotor simultaneously. To show how PISMC may improve system performance, this paper develops an experimental unmanned helicopter system to assess the performance of the proposed controller. The results of the simulation show that the tracking error of the PISMC is not only smaller but also converges more quickly than that of the conventional SMC. Resulting roll and pitch controllers are successfully verified in computer simulations and actual flight tests. The flight test results presented in the paper are found to be consistent with the simulation results.