Title: Biologically Inspired Vision and Control for an Autonomous Flying Vehicle
Project Summary: A closed-loop simulation of the Eagle helicopter has been developed using SIMULINK. The model incorporates realistic sensor models, state estimation and control. In simulation, a position control loop scheme using PID control with an attitude feedback inner loop has been shown to be a practical means of controlling the helicopter. The simulation will be used in the following chapters to demonstrate the feasibility of various sensing and control schemes.
Project Details: The material presented in This thesis is, to the best of my knowledge, original and has not been submitted in whole or part for a degree in any university. The following summarises my own contributions and any contributions made by other people:
Chapter 1: This chapter is all my own work.
Chapter 2: I completed the literature review in this chapter independently.
Chapter 3: The simulation of the Eagle helicopter, including development of all the C-code was implemented by myself. Mr Bilal Ahmed, provided assistance with generating the frequency plots for roll, pitch and vertical motion using the CIFER program. I conducted all of the systems identification experiments and was the pilot for all flights.
Chapter 4: I designed the avionics system architecture for the RMAX and PC104 Eagle helicopters. I selected the PC104 hardware and implemented a variant of the Linux operating system which would boot from a compact flash card on the various flight computers. Electronics design for the inertial systems and autopilots was completed at the UNSW@ADFA workshop under my direction. All of the on board software on the Eagle and RMAX helicopters was written by myself except for the frame grabber driver and software for computing optic flow, which was provided by Dr Javaan Chahl. I wrote the real-time driver software to interface to the Yamaha Attitude Control System on the RMAX, a multi-port serial card, the NovAtel DGPS system, laser rangefinder, ultrasonic sonar, servos and bluetooth modems. I wrote all of the ground control, telemetry and command and control software. I developed the calibration software for all of the sensors including accelerometers, magnetometers and gyroscopes.
Chapter 5: I developed the beacon algorithm, sensor fusion, controller software and associated simulations. The visual tracking code for the beacon experiments was provided by Dr Chahl. I conducted the flight experiments for the beacon tracking hover and the optic flow damped hover, including operating the ground control computer, tuning control gains and piloting the helicopter in-between closed loop flights.
Chapter 6: All work involving forward flight simulations, controller designs and test flights in this chapter is my own.
Chapter 7: All work involving simulations, network designs, code, techniques and flight test presented on neural networks is my own.
Chapter 8: The designs of the EKF algorithms are all my own. All of the code, simulations, interpretation of results and conclusions presented in this chapter are my own.
Chapter 9: The conclusions and recommendations in this chapter are all my own.
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