The Gimballed Helicopter Testbed: Design, Build and Validation

Abstract: To facilitate the development of an autonomous robot helicopter, an indoor helicopter flight test apparatus has been designed, built and validated. The design is motivated by a brief discussion of helicopter dynamics. Several options for the apparatus are considered and a detailed specification is laid out. Key design considerations are discussed in detail and the final design for the gimbal test stand is presented. Associated equipment is described and a manual for the operation of the stand is appended. To validate the capabilities of the test stand a system identification experiment was performed repeatedly. The consistency of the model extracted indicates that the entire system is reliable and accurate.

You can download the thesis (4mb), or view the presentation (3mb). The presentation contains some animations which may only be viewable in IE, here are direct links to the animations: slide15 slide16 slide17 slide18.

MOST Microsatellite Project - State Estimation using Kalman Filter

Abstract: An extended Kalman filter algorithm for attitude estimation based on Earth's magnetic field measurements is discussed. A fixed gain state observer is implemented. The observer algorithm was simulated with real satellite magnetometer data from UoSAT-OSCAR-22 to verify the algorithms validity.

Download the report (318kb). Take a look at the MOST homepage for details about Canada's first space telescope.