Unmanned Air Vehicle Research Simulator - Prototyping and Testing of Control and Navigation Systems

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental research simulator of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and supporting systems, designed at the Department of Avionics and Control, Rzeszow University of Technology. The research simulator enables hardware-in-the-loop testing of an autopilot, actuators, the ground control station and telemetry modules. Particular hardware blocks can be integrated with real-time environment with the use of a CAN data bus, Ethernet interface and a set of popular serial interfaces. Current experiments support development and hardware-in-the-loop testing of advanced flight control and navigation systems of a small UAV (taking into account both the on-board and the ground segments).