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Abstract In this paper, a novel robust control strategy based on disturbance-compensation-gain (DCG) construction approach is proposed for small-scale unmanned helicopters in the presence of high-order mismatched disturbances. The overall control structure consists of two hierarchical layers. The inner-loop controller is to guarantee the stability of the unmanned helicopters subject to high-order mismatched disturbances. With the estimation of the disturbances and their successive derivatives via finite-time disturbance observer (FTDO), by properly designing some disturbance compensation gains, a novel robust controller is developed to remove the high-order mismatched disturbances from the output channels. The outer-loop controller is to produce flight commands for inner-loop system, as well as to track the reference trajectory, which is carried out with the dynamic inversion technique. The simulation results demonstrate that the unmanned helicopters are capable to perform flight missions autonomously with the proposed control strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]