INTRODUCTION Since 2001, a Japanese national project has developed a helicopter emergency medical service (HEMS) system ("doctor-helicopter") and a central Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT) composed of mobile and trained medical teams for rapid deployment during the response phase of a disaster. PROBLEM In Japan, the DMAT Research Group has focused on command and control of doctor-helic...

This article presents novel results obtained using variance constrained controllers and maneuvering helicopters when also some helicopter sensors fail. For this purpose complex, control oriented, physics based helicopter models are used. A nonlinear model of the helicopter, which includes blade flexibility, is first linearized around specific maneuvering flight conditions (i.e. level banked tur...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the association of helicopter transport with survival of patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI), in comparison with ground emergency medical services (EMS). BACKGROUND Helicopter utilization and its effect on the outcomes of TBI remain controversial. METHODS We performed a retrospective cohort study involving patients with TBI who were registered in the National...

STUDY OBJECTIVE We determine the minimum mortality reduction that helicopter emergency medical services (EMS) should provide relative to ground EMS for the scene transport of trauma victims to offset higher costs, inherent transport risks, and inevitable overtriage of patients with minor injury. METHODS We developed a decision-analytic model to compare the costs and outcomes of helicopter ver...

The contribution is focused on helicopter elevation control. The experiments are performed on helicopter model, which is significantly nonlinear plant and it simulates in some simplified way dynamics of real helicopter. There is derived new way to control it which uses piecewise-linear neural model. As it is shown at the end of the paper, this new control algorithm brings decent performance imp...

Method Between 1 April and 30 June 2011, surviving adult male patients with bilateral traumatic lower limb amputations were retrospectively identified from ED records. Group I were transferred by Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT) in a CH-47 Chinook helicopter. Group II were transferred by PEDRO in an HH-60 Pavehawk helicopter. The time of injury (ToI); arrival time of the helicopter; blood...

In this paper we present an experimental test bed for the development and evaluation of control systems for unmanned helicopters. The test bed consists of a small unmanned helicopter, mounted on a flying stand that permits all possible movements but prevents the helicopter from damaging or crashing. A fuzzy controller is developed in MATLAB and tested in the helicopter using the test bed. The c...

Model Reference Adaptive Control (MRAC) is consists of a reference model, a plant model, and adaptive law. It is made to follow the target system to the reference model by fixed gain. As study example, Yang developed an adaptive control for SISO state space system[1]. Yang’s method[1] was not discussed about the performance of the reference model. MRAC depends on performance of the reference mo...

Abstract: Development of a reliable high-performance helicopter-based unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) requires an accurate and practical model of the vehicle dynamics. This report describes the process and results of the dynamic modeling of a model-scale unmanned helicopter (Yamaha R-50 with 10 ft rotor diameter) using system identification. A complete dynamic model was derived for both hover and...

BACKGROUND There are few in-flight studies of cognition-related cerebral oxygen status in helicopter pilots. METHODS Four male helicopter pilots volunteered for nine sorties during visual flight in a BK117 and UH-60J. The pilots' pre-frontal oxy-hemoglobin (O2Hb) and deoxy-hemoglobin (HHb) concentration were continuously monitored from the right/left sections of the forehead using near-infrar...