This paper presents a sensor fault detection and diagnosis system for autonomous helicopters. The system has been tested with the MARVIN autonomous helicopter. Fault detection is accomplished by evaluating any significant change in the behaviour of the vehicle with respect to the fault-free behaviour, which is estimated by using an observer. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated by means of MARVIN experimental results.

The mathematical description of the kinematics and dynamics of a model helicopter is presented. Using the derived closed form solution for simplified dynamics, a controller for an autonomous model helicopter is designed. This controller is composed of two loops: the inner loop for controlling the orientation of the main rotor plain and the outer loop to control the mission parameters like coordinates of some reference point, orientation or cruise velocity. The performance of the proposed controller is demonstrated for the case of position control in a computer simulation.