This paper describes a set of experiments involving small he- licopters landing automated landing at unusual attitudes. By leveraging the increased agility of small air vehicles, we show that it is possible to automat- ically land a small helicopter on surfaces pitched at angles up to 60 degrees. Such maneuvers require considerable agility from the vehicle and its avion- ics system, and they pose signicant technical and safety challenges. Our work builds upon previous activities in human-inspired, high-agility ight for small rotorcraft. However, it was not possible to leverage manual ight test data to extract landing maneuvers due to stringent attitude and posi- tion control requirements. Availability of low-cost, local navigation systems requiring no on-board instrumentation has proven particularly important for these experiments to be successful.
['Selcuk Bayraktar', 'Eric Feron']
Experiments with small helicopter automated landings at unusual attitudes