I'm also working on this project at DeVry University. I have 7 months to get this project done. My team is only focusing on the navigating part of the heli though. Our goal is to get the heli to go from A to B using xyz coordinates. Stability is going to be handled by the auto hoovering module. I'm using an HCS12 microprocessor to control the remote controller of the heli. Data from the heli will be transfered by an FM tx to the HCS12. Right now we are still in the learning process of the heli controls. I think we will learn a lot while working on this project.