Simulating quadrotor UAVs in outdoor scenarios

Motivated by the risks and costs associated with outdoor experiments, this paper presents a new multi-platform quadrotor simulator. The simulator implements a novel second-order dynamic model for a quadrotor, produced through evolutionary programming, and explained by domain knowledge. The model captures the effects of mechanics, aerodynamics, wind and rotational stabilization control on the flight platform. In addition, the simulator implements military-grade models for wind and turbulence, as well as noise models for satellite navigation, barometric altitude and orientation. The usefulness of the simulator is shown qualitatively by a comparing how coloured and white position noise affect the performance of offline, range-only SLAM. The simulator is intended to be used for planning experiments, or for stress-testing application performance over a wide range of operating conditions.