• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.94-100
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• 2008

Present chemical application method using a power sprayer has been labor intensive, costly and ineffective. Therefore, a small agricultural unmanned helicopter was suggested to replace the conventional spray system. In this study, conceptual design for developing the helicopter and a consequential prototype were reported. The overall conceptual design was initiated by deciding the type of agricultural helicopter, as the single rotor helicopter with a tail system. As the first step of the designing, an air-cooled, 2-stroke engine was selected and a prototype transmission was designed by determining the rotating speed of main rotor shaft. A 'pusher' type tail rotor system was adapted to balance the reaction torque and reduce the power use. The tail boom length was designed to avoid the rotating trajectory of the main rotor. The RF console consisted of the engine control, attitude control, and emergency control modules. Assembling the prototype concluded the mechanical development of the agricultural helicopter.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.31 no.2 s.115
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• pp.95-101
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• 2006

Present chemical application system using a power sprayer has been a labor intensive, ineffective and shirking task in farming. Therefore, a small RF controlled (unmanned) helicopter was suggested to replace the conventional spray system. The aerial application using the unmanned helicopter has been already utilized in Japan, where total area applied up to 704,000 ha in 2005. In this article, the status and cost analysis on the unmanned agricultural helicopter were studied. The aerial application using the agricultural helicopter helps precise and timely spraying and reduces labor intensity and pollution. The field capacity of the helicopter was found to be 60-70 ha a day. The break even point was estimated near the operating area of 750 ha annum. The development of an agricultural helicopter was necessary for taking advantages of both technique and economy.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.265-270
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• 2005

This paper presents a new attitude stabilization and control of an unmanned helicopter based on neural network compensation. A systematic derivation on the dynamics of an unmanned small-scale helicopter is performed. Combined rotor-fuselage-tail dynamics is derived in body-fixed reference frame with its origin at the C.G. of the helicopter. And the resulting nonlinear equation of motion consists of 6-DOF air vehicle dynamics as well as the rotor flapping and engine torque equations. A simulation model was modified using the existing simulator for an unmanned helicopter dynamic model, which reflects the unmanned test helicopter(CNUHELI). The dynamic response of the refined model was compared with the flight test data. It can be shown that a good coincidence was accomplished between the real unmanned helicopter system and the mathematical model. This dynamic model was linearized for classical controller design using small perturbation method. A Neuro-PD control system was designed for both longitudinal and lateral flight modes, and the results were compared with the PD-only control response. Simulation results show that the proposed Neuro-PD control system demonstrates better performance.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.677-683
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• 2015

This paper proposes a helicopter direction adjustment system using barycenter shift. Most conventional methods for direction adjustment of uniaxial helicopters rely on the angle of inclination of the main rotor. However, the inherent burden of the bearing of the main rotor and serious abrasion of the helicopter using the above methods may results in loss of balance. To decrease abrasion and enhance the barycenter stability, the proposed method was used to shift the barycenter of the helicopter instead of the main rotor for direction adjustment. We set a biaxial ARM on a uniaxial helicopter to adjust the direction of ARM pointing as well as to realize stable direction control when the helicopter loses its balance. The method may enhance the landing safety of helicopters in emergencies. Uniaxial helicopters can be controlled under any environment by adjusting the motor parameters of the ARM which is dependent on the center of mass using neural network. The experiment results show that the helicopter can return to the starting position quickly under the external disturbance.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.342-351
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• 2012

Purpose: Aerial spraying with an agricultural unmanned helicopter became a new paradigm in the agricultural practice. Laterally tilting behavior of a conventional agricultural helicopter, resulting in the biased down-wash and uneven spray deposit is a physically intrinsic phenomenon while hovering and cruise flights. Authors studied and developed a roll-balanced agricultural helicopter with a raised pylon tail rotor system. In this study, the attitude of the roll-balanced helicopter was determined using the Kalman filter algorithm, and the quality of roll balancing of a bare-airframe helicopter was evaluated. Methods: Instantaneous attitudes were estimated using the advantage of gyroscope, followed by the long term correction and prediction using accelerometer data for the advantage of convergence. The attitudes of the fuselage were calculated by applying the Kalman filter algorithm. The spraying maneuver of the helicopter was performed at a field of 50 m long, and the attitude data were acquired and evaluated. Results: The determination of attitude using the inertial measurement unit(IMU) and Kalman filter was reliable and practical. The intrinsic attitude of the developed helicopter was stable and roll-balanced. The deviation of roll angle was ${\pm}6.3^{\circ}$ with an average of $0^{\circ}$, referring to roll-balanced. Conclusions: Handling quality of the roll attitude determined to be steadily balanced. The balancing behavior of the developed helicopter would result in an even spray pattern during aerial application.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.798-803
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• 2013

In this paper, the activities of North America to enhance the flight safety of helicopter were introduced. In North America, by 2009, 49% of worldwide civil helicopters are in operation. The development trends of North America to enhance the flight safety of helicopter are expected to have a significant impact to the other helicopter operating areas. The analysis of the case of Gulf of Mexico where large fleet of Helicopter in operations, FAA's NextGen program, and the Canadian plan to comply with the ICAO's Aviation System Block Upgrades plan shows the direction of helicopter avionic development for enhancing the flight safety of helicopter.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.08a
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• pp.1375-1379
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• 2004

Unmanned Helicopter has several abilities such as vertical Take off, hovering, low speed flight at low altitude. Such vehicles are becoming popular in actual applications such as search and rescue, aerial reconnaissance and surveillance. These vehicles also used under risky environments without threatening the life of a pilot. Since a small aerial vehicle is very sensitive to environmental conditions, it is generally known that the flight control is very difficult problems. In this paper, a flight control system was designed for an unmanned helicopter. This paper was concentrated on describing the mechanical design, electronic equipments and their interconnections for acquiring autonomous flight. The design methodologies and performance of the helicopter were illustrated and verified with a linearized equation of motion. The LQG based estimator and controller was designed and tested for this unmanned helicopter.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.6 no.12
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• pp.1120-1125
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• 2000

This paper presents a technique for estimating the attitude of a model helicopter at near hovering using a combination of inertial and non-inertial sensors such as gyroscope and potentiometer. To estimate the attitude of helicopter a simplified indirect Kalman filter based on sensor modeling is derived and the characteristics of sensors are studied, which are used in determining the optimal Kalman gain. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm simulation results are presented with real flight data. Our approach avoids a complex dynamic modeling of helicopter and allows for an elegant combination of various sensor data with different measurement frequencies. We also describe the method of implementation of the algorithm in the model helicopter.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1998.07b
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• pp.525-527
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• 1998

The fuzzy-based autonomous position control system for hovering of an unmanned helicopter has been developed. An unmanned helicopter Is flying vehicle which can aviate freely even at narrow or hazardous space. The bottleneck of the full utilization of the unmanned helicopter is mainly on the control difficulty caused from its nonlinear and unstable characteristics. This paper presents a Fuzzy control technique to have the unmanned helicopter perform hovering. Experimental results of real unmanned helicopter control are included.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.33 no.9
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• pp.922-929
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• 2009

This paper deals with the State-Dependent Riccati Equation (SDRE) Technique for the design of helicopter nonlinear waypoint guidance controller. To generate the flight guidance through multiple waypoints, we use the trigonometric spline. The controller design and its validation is based upon a level 2 simulation helicopter model and the designed SDRE controller is applied to the trajectory tracking problems. To validate the designed SDRE controller, the simulation environment of high fidelity helicopter model is developed using three independent computers. This paper focuses on the validation the present SDRE controller through the helicopter waypoint guidance simulation.