The Implementation of an Autonomous Helicopter Testbed

Miniature Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are currently being researched for a wide range of tasks, including search and rescue, surveillance, reconnaissance, traffic monitoring, fire detection, pipe and electrical line inspection, and border patrol to name only a few of the application domains. Although small/miniature UAVs, including both Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) vehicles and small helicopters, have shown great potential in both civilian and military domains, including research and development, integration, prototyping, and field testing, these unmanned systems/vehicles are limited to only a handful of laboratories. This lack of development is due to both the extensive time and cost required to design, integrate and test a fully operational prototype as well as the shortcomings of published materials to fully describe how to design and build a “complete” and “operational” prototype system. This work attempts to overcome existing barriers and limitations by detailing the technical aspects of a small UAV helicopter designed specifically as a testbed vehicle. This design aims to provide a general framework that will not only allow researchers the ability to supplement the system with new technologies but will also allow researchers to add innovation to the vehicle itself.