Comparative Framework for Maneuverability and Gust Tolerance of Microhelicopters

Abstract

Aerial microsystems have the potential of navigating low-altitude cluttered environments such as urban corridors and building interiors. Reliable systems require both agility and tolerance to gusts. This research develops a method to quantify the maneuverability and gust tolerance of bare airframes, independent of stabilizing controllers, using reachability and disturbance sensitivity sets. The method is applied to a stable flybar helicopter and an unstable flybarless helicopter, for which the state-space models were formed through system identification. It is shown that the flybar restricts the bare airframe’s ability to maneuver in translational velocity directions. As such, the flybarless helicopter proved more maneuverable and gust tolerant than the flybar helicopter. This approach was specifically applied here to compare stable and unstable helicopter platforms; however, the framework may be used to assess a broad range of aerial microsystems.