Abstract
In this paper, output tracking control of a helicopter model is investigated. The model is derived from Newton-Euler equations by assuming that the heli- copter body is rigid. First, we show that for sev- eral choices of output variables exact input-output lin- earization fails to linearize the whole state space and results in having unstable zero dynamics. By neglect- ing the couplings between moments and forces, we show that the approximated system with dynamic decou- pling is full state linearizable by choosing positions and heading as outputs. We prove that bounded tracltiiig is achieved by applying the approximate control. Next, we derive a diffeoniorphism showing that an appros- imation of the system is differentially flat, thus state trajectory and nominal inputs can be generated from a given output trajectory. Simulation results using bot,li output tracking controllers based on exact and approx- imate input-output linearization are presented for coni- parison.

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