Despite its relatively high cost, helicopter yarding has become a common means of timber extraction where site sensitivity, access, or regulations limit the use of less costly alternatives. The high costs associated with helicopter yarding, as well as the desire to expand the application of this system to extract lower value timber, increases the need for innovation to improve the operations. The cost or benefit of a particular harvest prescription or innovative technique is commonly assessed with a time and motion study. Capturing time study data require additional personnel or an imposition on the operator to record additional information. Onboard GPS can reduce or eliminate the need for additional personnel and/or operator input providing a rapid means of assessing and improving helicopter operations. This research employed onboard GPS in helicopter yarding to assess the potential of developing time studies using GPS data. Three helicopter models were sampled on a total of nine sites. Three of the sites have both experienced and inexperienced pilot data. Hemispherical canopy images were sampled at three sites. This complement of data permitted the following analysis: assessment of differences between experienced and inexperienced pilots, assessment of canopy cover on hook time, and the development of production models. The results indicate onboard GPS and the automated processing methods are suitable for creating time study data. Specifically, in all three case studies quantitative results were obtained, analyzed and opportunities for improvement identified. The time penalty suffered from using inexperienced pilots created 64 to 94% additional turn time. Increasing canopy cover correlated with increased hook time at two sites for the zenith angle segment 0 – 15°. Regressions assessing production show distance, slope, and choker delivery to be significant. This research shows the combination of onboard GPS, the automation process, and commonly collected turn information presents a number of opportunities, enabling the assessment of a wide range of helicopter yarding conditions. / Ph. D.

This Bachelor thesis is a part of a bachelor project which includes building, programming and controlling a 3DOF tandem helicopter. This particular report deals with the propulsion units, i.e. the motors and propellers of the helicopter. It covers the process of how to determine the most suitable propulsion units for the rig that eventually will enable it to run. To achieve this, different data have been processed. Torque and thrust are two important parameters that have been studied. The data have been acquired by different tests, e.g. thrust measurements from a thrust rig. Also more complex analysis such as Blade Element Theory and Actuator Disk Theory have been carried out in order to determine the behaviour of the propulsion units. Study data sheets and databases was also a part of the work. The result of this work was two equal propulsion units which were mounted in the helicopter. They proved to work satisfactory and provided wanted dynamics to the system. / Design & Implementation of a 3DOF Helicopter

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The use of rotary winged unmanned aerial vehicles in military and civilian applications is rapidly increasing. The primary objective of this study is to develop an automatic flight control system for a radio controlled (RC) helicopter. There is a need for a simple, easy to use methodology to develop automatic flight controllers for first-flight. In order to make the work accessible to new research groups without physical helicopter platforms, a simulation environment is created for validation. The size 30 RC helicopter in AeroSIMRC is treated as the final target platform. A grey box, timedomain system identification method is used to estimate a linear state space model that operates around hover. Identifying the unknown parameters in the model is highly dependent on the initial guess values and the input data. The model is divided into subsystems to make estimation possible. A cascaded controller approach is followed. The helicopter’s fast angular dynamics are separated from the slower translational dynamics. A linear quadratic regulator is used to control the helicopter’s attitude dynamics. An optimised PID outer-loop generates attitude commands from a given inertial position trajectory. The PID controllers are optimised using a simplex search method. An observer estimates the unmeasured states such as blade flapping. The controller is developed in Simulink®, and a plug-in written for AeroSIMRC enables Simulink® to control the simulator through a UDP interface to validate the model and controller. The identified state space model is able to accurately model the flight data from the simulator. The controllers perform well, keeping the helicopter stable even in the presence of considerable disturbances. The attitude controller’s performance is validated using an aeronautical design standard (ADS-33E-PRF) for handling qualities. The trajectory tracking is validated in a series of simulator flight tests. The linear controller is able to sustain stable flight in constant winds of up to 60% of the helicopter’s maximum airspeed. / MIng (Computer and Electronic Engineering), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The use of rotary winged unmanned aerial vehicles in military and civilian applications is rapidly increasing. The primary objective of this study is to develop an automatic flight control system for a radio controlled (RC) helicopter. There is a need for a simple, easy to use methodology to develop automatic flight controllers for first-flight. In order to make the work accessible to new research groups without physical helicopter platforms, a simulation environment is created for validation. The size 30 RC helicopter in AeroSIMRC is treated as the final target platform. A grey box, timedomain system identification method is used to estimate a linear state space model that operates around hover. Identifying the unknown parameters in the model is highly dependent on the initial guess values and the input data. The model is divided into subsystems to make estimation possible. A cascaded controller approach is followed. The helicopter’s fast angular dynamics are separated from the slower translational dynamics. A linear quadratic regulator is used to control the helicopter’s attitude dynamics. An optimised PID outer-loop generates attitude commands from a given inertial position trajectory. The PID controllers are optimised using a simplex search method. An observer estimates the unmeasured states such as blade flapping. The controller is developed in Simulink®, and a plug-in written for AeroSIMRC enables Simulink® to control the simulator through a UDP interface to validate the model and controller. The identified state space model is able to accurately model the flight data from the simulator. The controllers perform well, keeping the helicopter stable even in the presence of considerable disturbances. The attitude controller’s performance is validated using an aeronautical design standard (ADS-33E-PRF) for handling qualities. The trajectory tracking is validated in a series of simulator flight tests. The linear controller is able to sustain stable flight in constant winds of up to 60% of the helicopter’s maximum airspeed. / MIng (Computer and Electronic Engineering), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 18-21, 2004 / Town & Country Resort, San Diego, California / This paper discusses the design and implementation of the base station telemetry data processing system for the unmanned helicopter. The system designed is composed of code synchronizer, decoding and frame synchronizer as well as PCI bus interface. The functions of the system are implemented with very large integrated circuits and a standard PCI inserted card that is compact and easy to install. The result of flight performance tests shows that the system is reliable and can satisfy the requirements of telemetry system for unmanned helicopters.

The purpose of this study was to examine the phenomenon of helicopter parenting and the motivation behind overinvolved parenting of college-aged children. The literature reviewed in this study includes factors that contribute to helicopter parenting in the higher education environment: Millennial characteristics, parental demographics, and technology. In addition, the privacy act, higher education rankings, and financial aid (i.e., tuition and enrolment management strategy), which contribute to the higher education environment, are discussed. Literature on why parents engage in helicopter parenting is limited. As such, this study helped to address this gap in research. Using a social constructivist approach, data were obtained using a qualitative, multi-instrument case study method. Five parents of female, undergraduate students at a Canadian university participated in the telephone interviews. This study found financial and emotional support were the foremost ways parents supported their children. Parents were motivated by their desire to offer guidance; need for connection and communication; and need to show and receive love. Parents who participated in parent programming offered by the university, regardless of the type of programming, found it to be beneficial. Future research is needed to study father-son dyads as well as explore the reciprocation of support, specifically emotional support, from students to parents.

Insects posses an incredible ability to navigate their environment at high speed, despite having small brains and limited visual acuity. Through selective pressure they have evolved computationally efficient means for simultaneously performing navigation tasks and instantaneous control responses. The insect’s main source of information is visual, and through a hierarchy of processes this information is used for perception; at the lowest level are local neurons for detecting image motion and edges, at the higher level are interneurons to spatially integrate the output of previous stages. These higher level processes could be considered as models of the insect's environment, reducing the amount of information to only that which evolution has determined relevant. The scope of this thesis is experimenting with biologically inspired visual control of flying robots through information processing, models of the environment, and flight behaviour. In order to test these ideas I developed a custom quadrotor robot and experimental platform; the 'wasp' system. All algorithms ran on the robot, in real-time or better, and hypotheses were always verified with flight experiments. I developed a new optical flow algorithm that is computationally efficient, and able to be applied in a regular pattern to the image. This technique is used later in my work when considering patterns in the image motion field. Using optical flow in the log-polar coordinate system I developed attitude estimation and time-to-contact algorithms. I find that the log-polar domain is useful for analysing global image motion; and in many ways equivalent to the retinotopic arrange- ment of neurons in the optic lobe of insects, used for the same task. I investigated the role of depth in insect flight using two experiments. In the first experiment, to study how concurrent visual control processes might be combined, I developed a control system using the combined output of two algorithms. The first algorithm was a wide-field optical flow balance strategy and the second an obstacle avoidance strategy which used inertial information to estimate the depth to objects in the environment - objects whose depth was significantly different to their surround- ings. In the second experiment I created an altitude control system which used a model of the environment in the Hough space, and a biologically inspired sampling strategy, to efficiently detect the ground. Both control systems were used to control the flight of a quadrotor in an indoor environment. The methods that insects use to perceive edges and control their flight in response had not been applied to artificial systems before. I developed a quadrotor control system that used the distribution of edges in the environment to regulate the robot height and avoid obstacles. I also developed a model that predicted the distribution of edges in a static scene, and using this prediction was able to estimate the quadrotor altitude.

The requirement for low-level navigation flight conducted between 200 and 500 feet above ground level is something unique to the military helicopter pilot. Each novice helicopter pilot is introduced to this skill early and in a limited number of flights or flight hours. A low situational awareness (SA)is historically noted among the novice pilots during their first few flights within this flight regime. To that end, this thesis continues with the work conducted earlier to develop a trainer that places the pilot in an immersive and familiar cockpit environment for training through the use of chromakeyed technology as employed in the Virtual Environment Helicopter System (VEHELO). The pilot will then be able to learn and exercise required piloting tasks and multi-place aircraft communications as authentically and as meticulously as in actual flight. The focus of this thesis is to continue validation of the ChrAVE/VEHELO system. This will be accomplished by comparison of data obtained from data collected by pilots flying the ChrAVE and flying the actual aircraft during initial navigational training flights. Additionally this thesis will attempt to show that the latest version of the system has a previously unrecognized ability to improve pilot performance. The system is capable of teaching novice pilots the important skill of Crew Resource Management (CRM) and the appropriate communication skills. The original Chromakey Augmented Virtual Environment (ChrAVE) helicopter flight simulation system was developed to substantiate the feasibility of having embedded trainers for helicopters. Both the ChrAVE and VEHELO are comprised of commercial off the shelf (COTS) equipment in a mobile wheeled box. To determine the effectiveness of the ChrAVE as an instructional tool, the opinions of pilots and pilot instructors will be collected for analysis. The subject pilots will be tasked with numerous realistic piloting tasks. Empirical data will be collected and evaluated according to the low-level navigation performance thresholds set forth by Marine Medium Helicopter Training Squadron 164 (HMMT- 164) which is the CH-46E Model Manager. / US Marine Corps (USMC) author.

The BOSS symbology for rotorcraft is specifically designed to provide the pilot with the necessary information and guidance to safely land in brownout environments. From the last BOSS study, issues were brought forth regarding the longitudinal velocity algorithm, which sets up a deceleration profile and commands the forward speed of the aircraft throughout the approach. Pilots commented that the algorithm lead the aircraft to be too slow for too long, effectively prolonging the brownout. Thus the purpose of this study was to investigate new algorithms to enable a faster approach with less time spent in brownout. The previous deceleration algorithm was also not robust in its ability to provide consistent guidance at variable starting distances and starting velocities. Therefore a new algorithm was developed capable of providing more consistent guidance from various starting positions and velocities. Additionally, through manipulation of its parameters, it was found possible to reduce the amount of time spent at low speeds in the approach. Four algorithms were subsequently developed with varying levels of aggressiveness. Eight highly skilled pilots participated in a simulation study using a generic fixed-base simulator with a high-fidelity rotorcraft H-60 model. Results found that as the aggressiveness of the algorithm increased, the time spent at low speeds and in brownout significantly decreased. Concurrently the pitch of the aircraft (and resulting deceleration) significantly increased, though the pitch values were within reasonable limits for IMC flight according to previous literature. One of the new algorithms was found to significantly reduce the amount of time spent at low speeds by 24% and also received the highest preference ranking and the highest comfort ratings.