Active Decoupling Control for a Planetary Coaxial Helicopter Using Force Feedback

Abstract

Drones developed for interplanetary space missions require full autonomy of operations including safe landing and hovering due to the delay in communication. For operation in low atmospheric densities, coaxial helicopters are best suited and they are capable of handling manoeuvres due to their small footprints and ease of operation. However, the dynamics of the helicopter is coupled in lateral axes which need to be compensated for precise control. The present solutions include vision-based tracking in order to decouple the dynamics, which needs additional hardware. In this paper, a decoupling controller is presented that employs an accelerometer-based force feedback system for measuring the undesired forces in off-axis which does not need any additional hardware. The simulation results indicate that the force feedback methodology is very effective in controlling the off-axis drift of the coaxial helicopter.