System identification experiments on a large-scale unmanned helicopter for autonomous flight

Unmanned helicopters are now used to spray agricultural chemicals and take aerial photographs. In the near future, the aircrafts are expected to be used for a wide array of activities, such as rescuing and fire fighting. Then, an autonomous flight using several sensors typified by GPS is expected. In this paper, system identification experiments for a large-scale unmanned helicopter are carried out. The helicopter is compensated by attitude control that permits the experiments during the flight. Using input and output data, system identification results are shown through numerical analysis. Moreover, the effectiveness of the identified model is demonstrated through a position control based on the H_∞ control theory.