The Development of Neural Network Based System Identification ...

Chapter 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
The purpose of this chapter is to present a literature review on helicopter based UAS
technology, helicopter dynamics modelling, system identification approaches and the
development of neural network (NN) based flight controllers for autonomous flight of
an unmanned helicopter system.
The chapter is organised as follows. In Section 2.1, the potential areas of application,
the unique features and classification of helicopter based UAS are presented. The
components in autonomy enabling function that are required to achieve autonomous
operation are also described along with the challenges involved with the design of
automatic flight control system (AFCS). Flight vehicle system identification and first
principle modelling are reviewed in Section 2.2. NN based system identification and
its fundamental aspects such as model structure selection and training algorithm are
discussed in detail in Section 2.3. Different control techniques, such as classical and NN
based techniques used for flight vehicle control are provided in Section 2.4, together
with a brief review on model predictive controller. Section 2.5 provides a brief summary
of the chapter.
2.1 INTRODUCTION
An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) can be defined as an aircraft designed with no pilot
on-board which can performs various roles of piloted aircraft. A multi physical system
that includes the UAV, ground control station (GCS), payload and communication
architecture is defined as Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) with no human elements