VxWorks-based Flight Control System Simulation For Unmanned Helicopter

Unmanned Helicopter can be widely used in military, scientific research, civil, industrial and other fields because of its unique characteristics and has good prospects. Flight control system is its core component, which has an important impact on the flight quality. It is the reason that designing a reliable and high performance flight control system is the key point of the Unmanned Helicopter design. Simulation is an important technology and method in the development of flight control system. Using simulation, the development time can be shorten, the costs can be reduced, and the development efficiency can be greatly improved.In this paper, a certain ducted-type Unmanned Helicopter was used as a controlled plant. A real-time simulation system was designed with a VxWorks-based embedded operrating system .The real-time simulation of the flight control system was accomplished with Matlab/RTW tools, which provide an effective simulation method for the development of flight control system.The overall architecture of the simulation system, the design scheme of the software/hardware and the process of the simulation software development were described. The non-linear model of the ducted-type Unmanned Helicopter was established by using the mechanism modeling method. A 9-order linear model was obtained by using the small disturbance linearization and model reduction, which could meet the needs of the control system. The ARM-based hardware platform and the VxWorks-based real time operation system was described. Aiming at the target hardware, the BSP's cutting and realization was discussed. The configuration of the ethernet and serial device driver was designed, which is to meet the requirements of the simulation system in the VxWorks environment. The level structure and the bottom drivers was analysized. A control structure based on inner and outer control loop was designed according to the characteristics of the linearization model. A simulation model of the entire flight control system was established in simulink. The real-time code which was run in VxWorks was built with RTW external fashion. The real-time simulation for flight control system was realized.