High-Level Flight Controllers Applied to Helicopter Navigation: A Comparative Study

In this work three high-level nonlinear flight controllers for a helimodel are compared. A complete dynamic model, including cross inertial moments, an intermediary dynamic model, considering just the main inertial moments, and a simplified one, considering small angles and the correspondent approximations for the trigonometrical functions, were addressed. The performance criteria IAE and ITAE were the metrics used to compare such models, applied to simulation results obtained using such models in the design of the flight controllers. The result is that for tasks demanding aggressive maneuvers and/or requiring greater precision the complete dynamic model should be adopted, resulting in a more complete controller. In turn, a simpler controller, designed using the simplified dynamic model, can be adopted when a higher flight performance is not demanded and/or the processing unit is a low-capability one.