The Development of Neural Network Based System Identification ...

Chapter 3
AERIAL PLATFORM AND CUSTOM-BUILT FLIGHT
TEST SYSTEM
3.1 INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, the helicopter platform and avionic systems used for development and
validation of the system identification methods and control algorithms are described in
detail. Two avionic systems had been developed specifically for system identification
and flight control testing. For flight control testing, a safety test rig was developed
to restrain the helicopter movement which could prevent fatal crashes due to possible
hardware failures or programming errors.
The chapter is organised as follows: In Section 3.2, the aerial vehicle platform used
for flight testing of the system identification and control methods is presented. Next, a
description of test stand development is provided in Section 3.3 for safe testing of the
proposed flight controller system. The test stand design consists of two main sections
to simulate the translational and rotational motion of the helicopter. These features
provide a full 6 degree of freedom (DOF) flight function to the test stand design. Then,
the overall architecture of flight instrumentations, ground control station (GCS) and
avionics system for automatic flight controller development are given in Section 3.4. The
system overview for system identification experiment is given in Section 3.5. Finally,
the chapter is summarised in Section 3.6.