Cascaded control of 3D path following for an unmanned helicopter

The objective of the paper is to design the control system of following a predefined 3D path while maintaining a specified flight speed and considering the timing constraint. This can be accomplished by a cascaded solution framework based on theoretical dynamic error modeling. The controller for each loop can thus be designed separately so that the design problem is simplified and the control system can be implemented easily in pratice. A promising performance has be demonstrated by an accurate nonlinear simulation at current stage.