Simulation, Control and Visualization of UAS

Abstract

The Unmanned Vehicle Laboratory at the Department of Engineering Cybernetics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology has the overall goal of developing an unmanned aerial system (UAS). The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to be considered is the Recce D6 delta-wing produced by Odin Aero AS. A UAS is clearly quite a complex system, and the consequences of system failure during flight are obviously potentially vital. The need for a comprehensive test setup for extensive ground testing is clearly important, and a flight simulator of the UAV is a key component of such a test setup. A mathematical model of Recce D6 is suggested from a first-principle approach and together with appurtenant actuators implemented in Matlab /Simulink. A simple motion control system with reference models and simple PID controllers are also discussed and implemented. Last, a Matlab-native graphical interface is developed to substantiate the UAV handling. The simulation model, motion control system and visualization is put together in a nearly 7 minutes long demonstration video of a fully automated flight. The video illustrates a set of aircraft maneuvers and handling issues related to take off, touch and go landings, climbing, descent, banked turn, stall and landings under gusty wind and no wind. The resulting video reveals a promising basis of a simulator environment for hardware-in-the-loop testing, but further tuning of the model parameters is required to acquire an accurate artificial representation of the aircraft.