1. The testbed used in this research is based on an electrically powered radio control helicopter, whose detailed specification is given in Table 1. The DC brushless motor with high-capacity Lithium-ion-polymer batteries allows for more than 10 minutes of continuous flight with the ease of fully remote operation. The onboard components are designed and integrated with emphasis on the weight reduction for longer flight time, reliability, and maneuverability. The vehicle is controlled by a Pentium III 700MHz CPU in the PC104 form factor with a custom servo interfacing board, an inertial measurement unit (IMU), a high-precision carrier-phase different global positioning system, ultrasonic altimeters, an IEEE 802.11b device and so forth (Figure 5). The vehicle is also equipped with a vision computer module with a firewire camera for testing vision-based algorithms. When conducting experiments, a ground station, communicating with wireless Ethernet or modem, monitors the vehicle status in realtime and sends user commands. The flight data is transmitted to the ground station, and optionally stored in a local data storage device for future retrieval. B. Software
2. Powerplant Actro 32-4 motor (1740Wmaxat 75A)
3. IMU:Systron-DonnerMMQ50 Flight Computer:PC104Pentium III 700MHz Communication: IEEE 802.11b with serial