Enhancing Performance of a Twin-rotor Helicopter Model Using Intelligent Active Force Control

This paper presents a study on the effectiveness of utilizing an innovative control approach based on an intelligent active force control (IAFC) strategy to stabilize a twin-rotor helicopter model and improve its ability to effectively reject external disturbances via a simulation work. A detailed mathematical model of a two-degrees-of-freedom (DOF) helicopter was derived using the Euler-Lagrange method taking into account the effects of coupling and disturbances. In this developed model, a Proportional–Integral–Derivative (PID) controller was designed and combined with the proposed IAFC strategy to yield an intelligent hybrid control architecture known as a PID-IAFC scheme that can improve system performance and reject various types of applied disturbances. The intelligent algorithms used in the schemes were based on iterative learning (IL) and fuzzy logic (FL). In this work, different types of external disturbances in the form of sinusoidal wave, pulsating, and random noise disturbances were applied to the helicopter system to verify the sensitivity and durability of the proposed control schemes and consequently, a comparative study was performed to analyze the system characteristics. Notably, the efficacy of the IAFC based control unit was investigated to improve the body jerk performance in the presence of external disturbances. The acquired results reveal the effectiveness and robustness of the IAFC based controller in stabilizing the dual-rotor helicopter, rejecting the applied disturbances, and improving the body jerk performance by at least 54% for pitching and 19% for yawing motions in the presence of the pulsating disturbance, and 60% and 54%, respectively, for the random noise disturbance.