Praktische Regelsystemen Practical Control Systems (ET4-092)

Helicopter Experiment

Description
The helicopter setup consists of a beam attached to a fixed
pole. The beam can freely rotate in the horizontal and vertical planes. At both ends of the beam, DC motors with
propellers are attached. One motor is used to control the
vertical angle (elevation), the other one the horizontal angle (azimuth). The objective is to control the motors such
that attitude of the beam follows a specified reference. Here
we consider a simpler version of this experiment, where the
beam is locked in a fixed position in the horizontal plane and
only the vertical angle is controlled by using one propeller.
The schematic diagram in Figure 1 shows the construction
of the system including the relevant variables. Positive directions of variables are indicated by arrows.

bance rejection properties, i.e., it should be able to recover

from a small tick against the beam.

Physical Modeling
The nonlinear model equations are given below. Although
they could be derived by using the EulerLagrange equations or other formalisms, elementary physical insights suffice for the single-dimensional case. The beam is basically
a physical pendulum which, when excited, exhibits damped
oscillations around its stable equilibrium. This is because
the axis of rotation is above the center of gravity. The motor
is modeled as a first-order linear system. The force generated by the propeller is a (nonlinear) function of the propellers angular velocity:

Figure 1: Schematic drawing of the helicopter setup.

This system has one control input u, which is the voltage applied to the motor. This input is commanded from
the computer and is scaled between -1 (corresponding to
the maximal voltage making propeller and the beam rotate
in the negative sense) and +1 (corresponding to the maximal voltage making the propeller and the beam rotate in the
positive sense).
There are two measured outputs: the angular velocity of the propeller, and the angle of the beam. The
measurement of is scaled between -1 (corresponding to
the maximal negative velocity) and +1 (corresponding to the
maximal positive velocity). The measurement of is given
in radians.

Control Objective
Design a controller that makes the angle of the beam
follow a specified reference trajectory. The controlled system should have zero steady-state error and adequate distur-

= K1 u

(1)

+ b + K2 sin

= f ()

(2)

The parameters have the following meaning: is the time

constant of the motor (including the propeller), K1 is the
gain from the control signal to the propellers velocity, b is
the damping (viscous friction) of the beams motion and K2
is a constant related to the influence of the gravity force.
The unknown nonlinear function f () in equation (2)
can be approximated, for instance, by an odd polynomial
(such as f () = a1 3 + a2 , where the parameters a1 and
a2 can be estimated from data). Experience shows, however, that a simple linear approximation is good enough for
basic control design. Equation (2) than simplifies to:

+ b + K2 sin

= K3

(3)

Here, K3 is the gain from the propellers velocity to the

angular acceleration of the beam. As this system is openloop stable, it is quite easy to identify all the parameters by
means of experiments (such as a step response).

Simulink Template
A Simulink template helitemplate.mdl contains the
necessary real-time interface blocks and some scopes.
Make your own copy of this file and use it as a starting point
for your experiments. Before starting the first simulation,
define the sampling period h as a variable in the workspace
of M ATLAB. Always use the red button Stop to stop the
system before you terminate a simulation.