A Novel Swashplate Actuator Design for Unmanned Helicopter

Abstract

Advantages of the Unmanned Helicopter are simple structure, powerful flight capability, great flexibility, resulting in promising prospects and wide applications in both military and civilian fields all over the world. Whether an Unmanned Helicopter is of one single rotor or multiple rotors, the swashplate performance plays a key role in the rotor operation. A novel swashplate actuator is designed in this paper, with two ways of position feedback, namely, the LVDT feedback in the output end and the encoder feedback in the motor end. The hardware design and software design is introduced in details. The swashplate actuator designed is highly stable and relatively reliable. Ground tests prove the swashplate actuator is feasible and its performance satisfies the Unmanned Helicopter requirement.