Design and system identification of a micro coaxial helicopter testbed

This paper outlines design and system identification of a micro coaxial helicopter testbed. A commercially available micro coaxial helicopter is modified to include onboard avionics that enable realtime inertial measurements, multi-channel servo control, and bidirectional communication with a basestation computer. Recorded input-output flight data is used to identify the helicopter's attitude dynamics at the hovering condition in both time and frequency-domains, which are modelled as a parametrised MIMO linear time-invariant system. The fidelity of the identified dynamic models is validated by various residual analyses, and the identified parameters are compared with those of single-rotor helicopters from existing literature. The comparison shows that the newly identified models reveal inherent dynamic characteristics of the micro coaxial helicopter testbed. The identified models will serve as the basis for future design of model-based controllers and aerodynamic disturbance estimation.