Control System Development and Flight Test Experience with the MQ-8B Fire Scout Vertical Take-Off Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (VTUAV)

This paper describes the control system development of the MQ-8B Fire Scout autonomous helicopter. It includes a discussion of the system identification process and some details on implementing the identification output into a six degree of freedom simulation. Inner loop control law synthesis using classical, and two different modern design tools for meeting specific stability and performance metrics is also presented. This is followed by the details of the classical outer loop design process. Finally, some preliminary flight test results are presented from the successful initial flights.