Aerospace Vehicle Motion Simulation with Real-Time Telemetry Data

Abstract

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">With regards to any aerospace mission, it is very useful to have awareness about the state of vehicle, i.e., the information about its position, velocity, attitude, rotational rates and other concerned data such as control surface deflections, landing gear touchdown, working of mechanisms and so on. The sensor data from the vehicle that is communicated to the ground can be difficult to perceive and analyze. A frame work for real-time motion simulation of an aerospace vehicle from onboard telemetry data is henceforth developed in order to improve the understanding about the current state of the mission and aid in real-time decision making if required. The telemetry data, that is transmitted through User Datagram Protocol (UDP), is received and decoded to usable format. The visualization software accepts the data in a fixed time interval and applies the required transformations in order to ensure one-to-one correspondence between actual vehicle and simulation. The transformations required for missions with various scope are formulated. Data handling scheme for low frequency data and data loss are also discussed. The importance of environment design emphasized, the 3D terrain is created from satellite imagery and heightmap or digital elevation model. The shader for volumetric atmosphere useful for surface to space missions, is created using an algorithm that simulated scattering of light in the atmosphere. For larger environments required for launch vehicle missions, a scaling scheme is worked out and is implemented in combination with the floating-origin algorithm to deal with the floating-point limitations posed by current generation graphic engines. Techniques such as quad-tree structures for level of detail (LOD) rendering are used for optimization of performance. Animation of flight events are rigged and get triggered based on flags in telemetry data. The developed framework was tested in critical demonstration missions for ISRO – The Reusable Launch Vehicle Landing Experiment (RLV-LEX) and Test Vehicle Demonstration Mission -1 (TV-D1). The framework can be used for a variety of missions such as launch vehicles, spacecrafts, UAVs and even landers &amp; rovers.</div></div>