The University of Toronto RC helicopter: a test bed for nonlinear control

Model helicopters are becoming increasingly popular as benchmark systems for control theory and as platforms for aerial robotics. As benchmark systems, an important question to ask is: How do results for model helicopters scale to the full-size version? After presenting a description of a typical laboratory-scale helicopter system, we discuss some of the key differences between model and full-sized helicopters. We also discuss some of the fundamental issues of scale, including efficiency as the helicopter becomes very small or very large.