HELICOPTER STATION-KEEPING - COMPARING LQR, FUZZY-LOGIC AND NEURAL-NET CONTROLLERS

Station-keeping is a difficult flight control mode for helicopters sin ce they have little forward speed and are dynamically unstable in that mode. In this paper the designs for a fuzzy-logic controller and neur al-network (NN) controllers which are used to provide acceptable stati on-keeping performance for a single main rotor helicopter are presente d. The effectiveness of the proposed designs is established from an ex amination of a number of results obtained from a simulation of the con trolled helicopter. The required training and recall data needed for t he NN were obtained from the responses of the same helicopter type bei ng controlled in a station-keeping mode by a continuous, linear, optim al feedback control law, obtained by solving a linear quadratic regula tor problem. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.