ℒ1 adaptive attitude augmentation of a small scale unmanned helicopter

In this paper, the ℒ1 attitude control augmentation of an aerobatic helicopter is described. The baseline controller is divided into two loops, an attitude loop, and an angular speed loop. The attitude loop generates an angular reference speed for the angular speed loop, which finally provides the collective commands to the helicopter. Both loops are augmented through an ℒ1 adaptive controller whose low-pass filter bandwidth is tuned considering a simplified helicopter actuation and flapping dynamics model. Simulation results are shown, and the baseline and the augmented controllers are compared.