%0 Journal Article %T Combination of Two Nonlinear Techniques Applied to a 3-DOF Helicopter %A P. Ahmadi %A M. Golestani %A S. Nasrollahi %A A. R. Vali %J ISRN Aerospace Engineering %D 2014 %R 10.1155/2014/436072 %X A combination of two nonlinear control techniques, fractional order sliding mode and feedback linearization control methods, is applied to 3-DOF helicopter model. Increasing of the convergence rate is obtained by using proposed controller without increasing control effort. Because the proposed control law is robust against disturbance, so we only use the upper bound information of disturbance and estimation or measurement of the disturbance is not required. The performance of the proposed control scheme is compared with integer order sliding mode controller and results are justified by the simulation. 1. Introduction Helicopters are versatile flight vehicles that can perform aggressive maneuvers because of their unique thrust generation and operation principle. They can perform many missions that are dangerous or impossible for human to perform them. Helicopter is a multi-input multioutput (MIMO) highly nonlinear dynamical system, so most of the existing results to date have been based on the linearization model or through several linearization techniques [1, 2]. The linearization method provides local stability. In presence of disturbance or uncertainties the linearization can lead state variables of system to instability. In recent years, many papers have been published about control design of helicopter. The sliding mode approach has been employed for helicopter¡¯s altitude regulation at hovering [3, 4]. H-infinity approach has been also used to design a robust control scheme for helicopter [5, 6]. In [5] a robust H-infinity controller has been presented using augmented plant and the performance and robustness of the proposed controller have been investigated in both time and frequency domain. The proposed controller in [6] is based on H-infinity loop shaping approach and it has been shown that the proposed controller is more efficient than classical controller such as PI and PID controller. A robust linear time-invariant controller based on signal compensation has been presented in [7]. By suitably combining feedforward control actions and high-gain and nested saturation feedback laws, a new control scheme has been presented in [8]. Intelligent methods such as fuzzy [9] and neural network theory [10] have been used to design controller. Furthermore, in [11] a new intelligent control approach based on emotional model of human brain has been presented. The history of fractional calculus goes back 300 years ago. For many years, it has remained with no applications. Recently, this branch of science has become an attractive discussion among control %U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn.aerospace.engineering/2014/436072/